Ice Burn (Beyond the Western Deep)
by Saraa Luna
Summary: BTWD fanfic. "There was one thing to be said for the Tamian: they might've been soft, flighty tree-jumpers unaccustomed to the bite of war, but when they left someone alone, they didn't do it in the middle of the freezing tundra." History of the lonely Omega Canid in the Land End's Tavern.
1. Part I

_A.N: I might've said I was doing something else different for Valentine's Day to some of my Redwall fanfiction readers, but instead, here's this. Beyond the Western Deep just doesn't get enough love. Now then, onward to the story._

* * *

There was one thing to be said for the Tamian: they might've been soft, flighty tree-jumpers unaccustomed to the bite of war, but when they left someone alone, they didn't do it in the middle of the freezing tundra.

Enerus, nursing a tankard of ale in the very back corner of an overflowing tavern, couldn't say the same for his fellow Canid.

Ignoring the mindless chatter of all the Tamian and various travelers, which he'd learned to block out by now, Enerus took another drink of his ale. He kept from making a face and flicking his ears back in disgust at the far too sweet and fruity taste— something he hadn't managed to do the first time he'd tried it, much to the amusement of the portly Tamian waiter and terror of his scrawny assistant. From the smell of fear lingering around him, the latter had apparently been afraid that the big, bad wayward Canid was going to lash out at tasting something he didn't like.

Enerus took another drink, struggling not to role his eyes at the mere memory of the incident. The tinges of disgust in the remembrance hadn't faded. What, did the Tamian think they were savages for living up in Aisling that knew nothing about manners? Hell, the Canid had even stricter standards than the other Five Kingdoms when it came to respect, Enerus thought. But of course, the wide-eyed Tamian who'd shrank under his gaze had been nothing but an untried pup who'd never left his precious treetop kingdom, and his more experienced friend had just given his grimacing Canid costumer a knowing smile before suggesting he order something with less nuts in it next time.

Nuts. Who put nuts in good ale? It had been four months since he'd came to Sunsgrove, and Enerus still had no bloody idea why the brushy-tailed treefolk would ruin some good alcohol with a cocktail of fruit and smashed tree debris. He was severely hurting for some solid Canid grog, Enerus realized, momentarily allowing himself to be wistful.

Now THAT was a real drink; it burned like fire all the way down and made you feel like you could light up the whole of Aisling with the inferno in your throat. It drove away the cold and drew everyone together as they temporarily forget about the shards of ice that would cut into their feet on the next march and the howling sub-zero winds outside the fortress, and that was all that mattered.

Since he wasn't in the cold anymore, Enerus thought, and hadn't been for almost a year, he really didn't need it.

All of the lingering wistfulness came to a crushing stop in the Canid's chest. His mouth flattened to a grim line as he sat up straighter in his chair, ears pinning back before Enerus forced them up. Emotions were to be controlled on every mission. Feeling could cloud judgment and drive logical soldiers to pull off moves that would end with even more of their company dead. This pointless whimpering— like a pup in his first bootcamp drill— was a threat to his own personal mission, and it would not be allowed to go further.

Enerus ran a claw over the side of his tankard, eyes flicking up out of pure habit to make sure none of the other bar patrons were getting the wrong idea and trying to come over to his table. He didn't have to worry: not as much as a single look was passed his way from any one of the beasts gathered, regardless of species. It was as if everyone regarded the scruffy, grey-furred Canid as nothing more than a decoration in the Land's End Tavern. A sulky, grim decoration with one ear and the ability to kill any of them in twenty different ways with or without a weapon.

It had taken a while, though. The Tamian had been poking their whiskery faces into his personal space on and off for the first month or so, whether they were grey-furred old ones who limped over to pull up a chair and asked news of the outside, or brash young whelps half Enerus's size and width who strutted forward to him and dropped themselves down in a seat— usually with lots of their giggling friends watching and whispering from a table from the back of the room. Fair enough; he was in their territory, Enerus had thought. Their tree-clogged, leafy, snowless, far-too-warm, mountain-lacking territory. Interrogations were to be expected.

Then even the Lutren and Vulpin travelers had started harassing him. Beasts who didn't even live on the land he was… visiting in… had begun to spit questions at him like he was an envoy. The Lutren casually slid into the chairs around him with overtly cheerful greetings that made Enerus's hackles prickle in annoyance and drove his acute hearing berserk, trying to press joy on him he sure as fangfire didn't want, and as for the _Vulpin_— tundrafrost, he didn't want to get started on the damn Vulpin, Enerus thought.

Whenever a curious one had tried to get a seat next to him, they kept talking the whole time like they were in one of their slinking diplomacy meetings, and then somehow, they'd gradually slide into the chair during their mouth-running and be seated before Enerus could get rid of them. They moved with a practiced slipperiness to be expected from any slit-eyed desert dweller, he thought.

The Canid made a small sound of disgust into the tankard rim as he took another drink. Just remembering their attempts at discussion agitated him. They had plenty of other species travelers in that jilted melting pot of a capital of theirs. If they wanted a taste of foreign culture, they should STAY there, just like the Ermehn should stay in their rightful place in the north.

As far as Enerus was concerned, all of his bitterness and fang-baring towards them had nothing to do with the first month on his own and his constant mistake of seeing distorted Vulpin shadows as being Canid ones— and then eagerly turning around expecting to see his siblings, to see Strika, Carnis, or Clarit from his old company, and finding nothing but a startled fox instead of another broad canine face.

After so many failed attempts at civil conversation and dead novelty, all tavern visitors left Enerus alone.

Enerus almost got a grim smile out as he watched the other beasts bustle around in the crowded little restaurant. Almost. They were unaware of the eyes on them and (most) of their plumy tails, and he wondered if they'd have kept up their previous badgering if he would've had the hulking, toothy forms of Strika or Clarit with him. No doubt the chest-puffed young Tamian who swaggered over to him with only a hint of fear and nervously flitting eyes would blanch, turn tail, and head for their lattice-flooded homes in five seconds flat with Strika glaring at them and impatiently crushing a bird bone between her teeth. There was something about a pissant Canid vanguard that made other beasts wary.

Frostbite, the closer he looked, Enerus thought, observing the willowy form of a Tamian waiter threading through the crowd with plates of food balanced along his arms, the more he was convinced that the Tamian wouldn't survive a week in Canid training camp. Not that he hadn't known that already. The Sunsgrove empire produced more scouts than real warriors who could take a physical pounding on the land front, and though they could admittedly be deadly— the double funeral of Enerus's grandfather and grandmother after they'd tried taking on a Tamian captain together in the middle of the war being personal proof of that— none of the treeclimbers were built as sturdy as the Canid.

Their attacks were fleeting guerilla warfare tactics that involved up-close-and-personal uses of trees, and even the race's whole blasted martial arts style was based on keeping off the ground, something the local Tesque instructor kept telling his students over and over no matter how hard Enerus tried to ignore him (the Canid's ears were sensitive, and this 'Crim' had one hell of a grating voice).

It was a far cry from the icy sludge Enerus had been forced to march through with hundreds of other young Canid split into companies, all of them stomping through the frigid mud and ice circuit in full armor and roaring the drill instructor's marching chant right back at him. Enerus could still hear the song ringing in his ears even years after it had faded, feeling phantom armor weighing him down and muscles and ears aching from the cold, and smelling the oncoming sleet in the air.

"I don't know but I've been told!" the wiry bootcamp instructor had yelled in from up front as he set a merciless pace.

"I DON'T KNOW BUR I'VE BEEN TOLD!" hundreds of young Canid had roared back, keeping up their march.

"The northern tundra's goddamn cold!"

"THE NORTHERN TUNDRA'S GODDAMN COLD!"

"Shut your jaws and get in line!"

"SHUT YOUR JAWS UP AND GET IN LINE!"

"And listen to the recruits whine!"

"LISTEN TO THE RECRUITS WHINE!"

"I DIDN'T HEAR AN 'AND', MAGGOTS!" the instructor bellowed back at them. He'd turned his head to look back at his recruits, still marching on with the pitiless pace of a soldier who'd run his enemy to the ground out of pure determination and stamina before he even got the chance to draw his weapon.

Captain Javerk Millock was a lithe muscled Canid held together by spite, scars, and pure hate, and he had no hesitation into unloading it onto new recruits who thought his more flexible build for their kind made him an inch less intimidating.

"THREE MORE CIRCUITS, DOUBLETIME! Complain, and it's tripletime!"

"YES, SIR!"

"That's what I like to hear," Javerk had said, punctuating his words with a gravely snarl. Getting three or four knife scars across the throat when he'd cornered an Ermehn tribe leader had a distorted his voice. "You may be spineless, worthless, snot-nosed whelps who fancy that you can fight worth a damn, but I assure you, by the time I'm through with you, I'll make you all real soldiers if it KILLS you!"

"SIR, YES, SIR!"

"March, pups, and listen well!" Javerk snarled, pulling them into doubletime with an extra stomp of his foot. "You are the children of the Canid empire! If you drop a Tamian into a situation, they jump up and into the nearest tree to go confer about it. Drop a Vulpin into a situation, they roll out of the way and start trying to debate with it; drop a Felis into the situation, they land on their feet and get up to start arguing with the Vulpin; drop an Ermehn into a situation, they start a war that gets them exiled to the goddamn tundra, and the Lutren and Polcan are too busy bitching at each other to get involved! If you want a situation taken care of, you drop in a Canid, and they stand right up and fix the damn problem then and there!"

"SIR, YES, SIR!"

"You are one of those Canid!" Javerk said, slamming the base of his spear into the ground on one stride and splattering the recruits behind him with shards of cold mud— Enerus included. He felt it splinter against his feet bandages and those of the scruffy female next to them. They kept silent, but winced, and Javerk had noticed. His lip curled slightly in disgust. "No matter what happens, even if you manage to muck things up grandly and drop yourself into the level of a simpering, one-legged, plate-licking Omega, so low that an _Omega_ would consider you an Omega, you are still a Canid! You are not an ERMEHN! YOU ARE NOT IN THEIR PLACE! And you slagging recruits will fight like you know the sacrifices needed to get us here! Is that understood?"

"SIR, YES, SIR!" a thundering roar answered. Javerk had raised his paw in signal and continued on, cuing the bootcamp march to start again in ten seconds stat, and Enerus had trudged on with the rest of them, dying his whitish fur brown and wearing his throat raw out of sheer pride and determination to be the loudest.

He'd had both ears, then, Enerus thought. He'd had a lot of things. Only now, looking back, could he appreciate the irony of Javerk's comments about being an Omega, since the drill instructor had been looking at him while he spoke. Enerus downed another gulp of ale. There was no burn to the fruity Tamian drink. Not even a little.

If Captain Javerk had heard that one of his previous students was dropped to Omega rank after completely blundering their first important mission, there no was doubt that the bootcamp instructor would've hunted him down and given him mirror images of the scars across his throat, Enerus thought. …at least, if Captain Javerk bothered to search outside Aisling or the Canid empire as a whole.

He glanced up when there was a loud burst of noise from the other side of the tavern, but it was only two drunken Tamian, both of them clumsily balancing on their stools as they pounded each other on the back and roared with laughter.

A brief memory of a fire-lit night out camping in the craggy mountains of Aisling flickered through the Canid's mind.

'_Strika, slow down, you are going to choke yourself for drinking so fast.'_

'_Heh, Carnis, anyone ever told ya that you sound like a Felis?'_

'_I do not sound like a blasted Felis.'_

'_Suuuuure ya don't—"_

'_You do.'_

'_Hahaha!"_

'_Clarit! Why are you siding with her? I do not speak or sound like one of those cats! Enerus, back me up!'_

'_Well, if I'm being honest, you do kinda sound like a—'_

'_FELIS! See, even Enerus is with me! But don't worry, Carnis, you fight a stinking spot better than any of those cowards hiding away in their towers.'_

'…_if you get alcohol poisoning, I do not intend to help you.'_

'_That's cold, medic.'_

Without warning, another round of laughter from the Tamian and the smell of a dish burning in the far back of the tavern kitchen shattered the memory, ripping the one-eared Canid back into the present— alone— and Enerus felt the empty space burning around him like a festering wound. His tail was suddenly slinking closer to between his legs. Enerus forced it to straighten back out as if he was a dominant Alpha lashing at a lower to keep them in line, and he clenched his calloused fists around his tankard and jerked it closer. He needed more ale. NOW.

Trust the single good memory he remembered to be the one that took place right before he ruined everything with that exact same squad the next day.


	2. Part II

The mission that had made everything crumple like a Vulpin taking a spear to their back had started out standard, even for being relatively important. The Ermehn had been skittering around more than usual, and things besides frozen plants were beginning to unravel in the snow. The Canid at the northern garrisons decided that the banished race needed to be reminded of their place.

Enerus and his then company, along with several others, were sent on a reconnaissance mission, albeit with an added objective: put up a solid front and drive off any Ermehn they found lingering around the Aisling and Northern Wastes border. Killing them wasn't the suggested course unless absolutely necessary— things were tense, and the Canid wanted to make a point, not a war— but roughing them up was perfectly fine, and pushing them back further into the heap of mountain passes, jagged rocks, and infertile soil was a requirement. Cocky Ermehn never lead to anything good.

So it was that in the freezing morning after they'd clambered out of their beds and geared up, saluting their superiors on the way out, Enerus, Strika, Carnis, and Clarit left Deltrada and began their patrol down the borderline.

It was freezing cold that morning, Enerus thought, though that was always the weather for Aisling and the waste of a country above it. The breaths of all the gathered Canid floated around their mouths in white clouds as they picked their way through the spiny pine trees and hard snow, icicles forming on their whiskers. Enerus was immune to the bite of ice against his feet and heels at that point, and he all felt was a dull throb that assured him all was well and that he had no frostbite. It was when you _didn't _feel any pain in your toes that you knew you were in trouble.

Strika grumbled about the ice as she shook her head, slinging little fragments all over Enerus marching behind her. He grimaced, blinking and pulling back to keep from getting any of them in his eyes.

"Watch it, Strika."

She rolled one amber eye back, not bothering to stop as she stomped down the snow ahead. In the cursed slushy snow that meant none of the heavy Canid could traverse atop it, she and her sister Clarit were put up front to plow through the snow with their greater size, and Carnis and Enerus followed in the leeway. But in this half-and-half weather, the female was determined not to allow anyone to share point with her while she could manage on her own.

There were many words to describe Strika, but no one needed them, Enerus thought. They only needed three: aggressive, abrasive, and frontrunner. She'd won the bloodline lottery by being born to a higher ranking couple on top of an entire family known for thick skin and even thicker muscle mass, and Strika had pounded her way through bootcamp to emerge near immediately in charge of an active field group to do what she did best: crack open heads and lead her team through at any cost.

"I am; cover your face if it's bothering ya that much, Enerus. You've got a hood for a reason." Strika glared at him, daring him to say something as they tromped over the remains of a shattered log that had long since been pounded into the ground in a pulp from the footsteps of others… including Ermehn.

"Yeah, blocking windchill," Enerus said, clearing some ice off his whiskers. It was too damn early for this kind of clogging. He glared back at Strika… but not for too long. The defiant eye contact was quickly dropped before it became challenging. "Not for keeping my Point's kicked-up ice fragments from trying to blind me before the mission gets started."

"Too bad," Strika said bluntly. "Tough it out, Second. You've got two eyes for a reason anyway; Carnis back there could always take one or the other out if you think they're not working for ya anymore." She turned her attention to Carnis in the back, who was currently flanked by Clarit. "See any disturbance behind us?"

"No," Clarit said, tilting her head. Her ears rotated as she flicked them through the typical search positions all Canid were taught in basic, and Enerus could see her cloudy eyes becoming detached as she went to another more primeval level of focus. Her giant scarred nose twitched as she looked skyward and searched the air for the oily traces of Ermehn musk. "I can't smell anything, either. The wind is making it hard."

"The wind up here always makes it fragging hard. It's not a not a new occurrence," Strika said. Clarit disregarded the snap in her voice with her typical stoic attitude towards her sibling leader and gave her a tiny nod in response, continuing on in her position of Rearguard.

Their leader's gaze went to Carnis, their slender medic who was already standing at alert as he followed in Enerus's tromped down footsteps. All of them knew how poor Clarit's vision was, despite how acute her hearing and smell were.

"I have not spotted any movement behind us," Carnis said, adjusting the healer's pack on his shoulders. He kept his scratched spear close at paw. "We are fine for now."

"Good," Strika grunted, turning her attention to a particularly stubborn snowdrift that wouldn't get pulverized. "I have no intention of dragging us into another moon-forsaken Ermehn pincer ambush."

"We wouldn't have a choice about it if there was one," Enerus said. He gritted his thick jaw, hefting his spear up higher over his shoulder as a growl came into his voice. "But those tattooed iceslickers wouldn't like what they'd get a hold of."

"Ha," Strika said, teeth bared as she shoved aside an ice-coated tree branch that had fallen in the last storm. Her muscles strained and tail bristled before it gave in with a crack, clearing the patrol path further and letting the rest of the team pass through.

Enerus and Carnis made sure to step over the sharp fragments that were as dense as rock, and Clarit followed behind them, throwing the tree branch away from the path for good measure. She did so with a single huff of breath drawn through her teeth and one mighty heave of her arms, and they all heard the muffled crash as it landed out of sight in the snow, all done with half the effort of Strika.

As far as Enerus was concerned, Clarit was a freak of nature. A helpful, relatively friendly freak of nature, but one nevertheless. Whatever the hell lurked in her and Strika's blood had come out even more viciously in Clarit's form than it did in her tough older sister's, and the result was a dark-furred Canid a head taller than everyone else with a set of jaws and broad shoulders that honestly made Enerus feel a little jealous, and he wasn't that bad off. Far better than Carnis, anyway, but he kept quiet about that.

Watching Clarit casually heave away the bigger parts of Strika's debris as the whole team helped chip through the frozen path, Enerus was more than happy that the two siblings hadn't been born with opposite personalities. He didn't know how the team had ended up with their own personal walking weapon, seeing all the vanguard divisions would drool over seeing a recruit like her— strong, mostly instinct-driven, and conscious of her own big lacking in things like leadership or diplomacy. She took orders from authorities without question and slammed right into whatever was in their way… often with her jaws being used as much as her spear. It wasn't a pretty sight.

Clarit was an animal even amongst the Canid, but she got things done. That was what mattered.

Only the blind and deaf hadn't realized this was how she was going to end up, Enerus thought, keeping alert as the sun began to rise higher over the tundra. He frowned at the snow.

Snowblindness wasn't too much of a threat as long as Strika kept them under the trees, but out on the mountainsides or plains, it was a dangerous element. He'd have to keep a check on the sun and route. In front of him, Enerus saw Strika thinking the same, watching the rays filter through the tree branches and turn white snow into a glowing mass. She turned back more towards the shadows, her team following.

When her younger sister was sent out on her first survival training mission in bootcamp, Clarit had managed to accidentally run into an elderly Ermehn holed up in a rotting outpost on the outskirts of the garrison's turf and tried to force him out— only for his perfectly healthy, young and very angry warrior son to come bursting out of the trees where he'd been hiding and sink an axe into her stomach.

The Ermehn had fled and left a shattered Clarit behind. Another wandering recruit found her body a mile or two away from the garrison from where she'd crawled on all fours back towards the garrison before collapsing. He had called for help and pulled her back to the fortress. To the surprise of everyone— even after hours of crawling in freezing weather and leaking blood onto the Aisling ground before she was sewn back together— Clarit had survived.

If that hadn't been an omen for something, Enerus thought, then nothing was. It became further ridiculous when he learned that an in-training Carnis was the medic who'd had to sink his paws wrist deep into Clarit's entrails to pull out the ice shards threatening to tear them to pieces, since wounds frosted quickly out on the northern waste front. And on top of everything else, Enerus had been the soldier to deliver the news to one up-and-coming Strika Strikfang that her younger sister had gotten axed during her survival training.

Now, five years later, all of them were on the same team, Enerus thought. He sniffed as he felt something in his nose tingle. Was that a smell of something burning? He'd never been much of one for superstition— that was for the Polcan and Lutren, two species comprised entirely of paranoid sailors— but something about that chain link of events was foretelling, if you asked him. Four beasts weren't just introduced through near death that way and then coincidentally ended up on the same company without a word of communication between the events.

"Enerus! Enerus!"

Strika's sharp bark broke him out of his thoughts, and Enerus blinked in surprise, shaking his head to clear his vision. The company had come to a stop behind the side of a snow-coated rock cliff, hiding behind its jutting out side, and Strika was glaring at him with her spear in paw like he was an idiot. Enerus quickly realized that both Clarit and Carnis were staring at him from the back, giving their Second space like he'd ordered them back. Carnis had an odd look on his face, his tan ears pinned back at an angle Enerus couldn't read.

"What?" he said. "I heard you the first time, Strika." He narrowed his eyes in annoyance at the assessing look she had on her face. Part of her neck fur was bristling at an offbeat angle. Enerus moved up next to her, turning his attention to what had made Strika stop before entering the sparser forest: the sight of one of the little outposts that littered the Aisling and Northern Waste borders. Abandoned shells left from the war. And judging by the soft scent of smoke that was permeating the air and the thin grey plume rising from the clunky outpost's rotted chimney, the outpost was no longer abandoned.

"No, ya didn't," Strika growled, and there was that odd tone to her voice that Enerus hated to hear. "You had another lock-up moment on us." She roughly rapped her knuckles against his shoulder armor. "Keep your head screwed on this mission, Second, or the Ermehn are going to unscrew it for ya."

Strika turned to face Clarit and Carnis, stepping away from her irritated second-in-command. 'Lock-up moments' his tail, Enerus thought, forcing himself to stay neutral. He swallowed the low growl in his throat. Fangfire, it might've been common for leaders to use running criticisms to keep their Seconds on their toes, but this one was getting ridiculous.

"Alright, everyone, listen up," Strika said. She gestured to the outpost. "On my signal, Carnis and Clarit, both of ya hit the front entrance. Enerus and I'll try to work on unlocking the backdoor to the outpost; the few scum in there probably have it blocked, but we'll work on getting them a place to wriggle out of it when they've had enough. The point here isn't to _kill_ them," she said, pausing to give a significant glare at Clarit, "just to rough up all of those nomads and make sure they know who damn well owns the border. If they run for it, give them a scare and let them run. I want loud, I want snarling, I want slagging _intimidating, _and with a minimum of dead on both sides," she growled. "Dead Ermehn tell no tales."

Strika gave a tiny pause, and Enerus saw her give a familiar look to Carnis: _keep her in check._ Carnis give a nearly invisible nod, tightening the straps on his healer kit to keep it from bouncing during battle. Clarit didn't notice or didn't care, already beginning to draw her sword and stare intently at the outpost. She could sense a close range fight coming. Carnis was going to have to work at holding her back, Enerus thought, seeing Claire beginning to tense and fall into a crouch.

Out of all of them, Carnis was the smallest, but he followed logic and kept a level head during fighting, always taking efficiency overall. Clarit, who was the opposite— an explosion of blows, snapping jaws, and splattered enemies— needed the smaller Canid she towered over to keep her instincts in check. It had been so ever since the company assembled.

Carnis might've been born into a family on the same social tier as him, Enerus thought, which had started them both with a level playing field, but the Canid medic's luck went down from there. He was built the same way as drill instructor Javerk— smaller, more flexible, and swift— but instead of having any of Javerk's ferocity, Carnis got light brown fur with dark markings scattered along his face and back that looked almost Ermehn in nature, along with a too-formal speech and clear voice that sounded almost _Felis _in nature… and his inclination to fight as tactically as a Felis didn't help any. His bootcamp had hated him.

Enerus was pretty sure Carnis had gotten his first experience at being medic by sewing up his own wounds and nursing his own black eyes rather than going to the infirmary. He could be as stubborn and prideful as the tundra was cold in the right situations.

Those situations were not ones that involved holding back Clarit and making sure a slaughter didn't take place.

Strika assessed her team one last time, making sure they understood, and she gave a 'move out' signal with her paw as she clicked her fangs together. The Canid split off into pairs and disappeared into the whiteout of the tundra. Up ahead, the trail of smoke lazily rose from the bleak form of the outpost.

Enerus and Strika kept together, Enerus taking point for once to put his eyes to use. They wouldn't be much good if he was hidden behind Strika. As they silently ran around the trunks of the spaced out pine trees, which were growing thinner spread with every step, all of the soldiers were very aware of the blocky, high up square gaps on the outpost's walls. If an Ermehn was stationed at the lookouts, they had a brief gap of time to get as close as possible before their element of surprise was lost, and it was all a pell-mell sprint through the snow.

With his fur coloration, Enerus was safer than most out on the tundra. Strika was a walking arrow target.

They both hurried, pushing their time limit, and Enerus could feel the hard packed snow stinging at his feet and crunching under every step, cold wind burning his eyes. Right behind him, there was the dim clanking of Strika's armor, and the grey Canid's neck fur was on end from feeling Strika's heated breath almost right against it. The outpost grew closer like an image twisted by adrenaline. Enerus couldn't see Carnis and Clarit any longer, even though they'd gone on ahead. They drew even nearer. He felt a stab of concern as the smell of something foul burning flickered in his nose. What were the Ermehn burning? Fangfire, he should call Clarit and Carnis back—

There was a burst of motion from the front outpost door, Clarit's dark pelt flickering against the white snow like a distress signal, and the door slammed open as two roared battle cries lit up the arctic air. Enerus's heart pounded as he heard the wild screams of the Ermehn join them. The sound of metal meeting metal and things slamming against the outpost's stone walls echoed over the ice.

Then he and Strika were suddenly pressed against the outpost's back wall, coarse rock clattering against their armor and gnawing against their skin, and Strika was cursing at the snarls and sounds of battle raging within the building. She reared away, running back along the path they'd just pounded out. Enerus cast aside his spear and drew his sword just as Strika spun around on her heel, gritted her teeth, took off, and threw her shoulder against the door with a snarl.

Aged and rotted wood splintered under the force of colliding armor. The hinges gave a rusty scream before shattering. Snow sprayed across Enerus's legs as Strika flew into the outpost like force of nature, and there was a nasty crunch from something inside before her brawny body came leaping out into the snow again. She narrowly parried a dagger strike at her arm. An Ermehn fled from the front door.

"Enerus, in!" she yelled, borrowing his cast aside spear and going into a crouch. Enerus could see the havoc of warring shadows through the crushed backdoor. "It's too small for me to get in there close with Clarit already; GO!"

Without a single moment of hesitation, Enerus threw himself inside the door with his sword drawn, the smell of something burning still clogging his nose.

Inside was pure chaos. In the small outpost with crumbling walls and a sleek rock floor covered in debris, Carnis and Clarit were warring with three Ermehn, all of them pressed into close range fighting. The fire they'd lit was guttering out, and Clarit gave a snarl as she slammed the hilt of her sword into a green-cloaked Ermehn's face, risking cutting her own neck open. There was a crack.

Blood poured down the staggering beast's face and blotted out his tattoos as he took a slice at Clarit's belly, trying to slip his blade between her armor gaps. She barely avoided them, his wicked blade scraping against her chest plate, and Clarit took an impulsive swing at his face that would've finished shattering whatever bone had been breaking. It met with nothing but air, the Ermehn taking in a deep breath as he dodged and laid Clarit's wrist open with his dagger, and she howled with outraged pain and backed off. The cloaked warrior recovered with a spit of blood from the corner of his mouth. He lunged, and their fight began anew.

In the nearby corner, Carnis and a short female dueled, playing a dangerous game of keep-away with unsheathed daggers darting to and fro, the blades humming and clashing in the air as both fighters tried to out sidestep each other. The medic's cheek was bleeding, and a sheet of blood poured down over the Ermehn female's eye from a thin cut across her face, but neither of them were slowing, dancing back and forth from the wall with every slash of their knives.

Anger sparked into Enerus's chest as he launched himself at the third Ermehn, slamming his elbow into their diaphragm to keep them from jumping on Clarit's exposed back as she fought with the other warrior. Enerus's opponent gave a tribal curse, twisting away from his blow to avoid being knocked unconscious. Their hoop earrings clattered as the Ermehn was forced to turn their attention over to Enerus— and not the bulky Canid nearby that was decimating their companion the closer she forced him towards the wall.

What the hell was she doing? Enerus thought, growling as he dodged a stab at his ribs. He blocked it with his sword. The feel of clashing metal reverberated through his whole arm. They were supposed to drive the Ermehn away, not focus on killing them; why the blazes wasn't Carnis keeping her in check? He wrinkled his nose through his bared teeth and snarl. Whatever the Ermehn had been burning earlier smelled even worse.

At that moment, Carnis slashed open the cloak and chest of the Ermehn he'd been fighting, kicking off the wall to give himself more force. Blood and cloth swirled together, shreds of fur and thread falling through the air, and the female was forced to run out the door Carnis had been driving her towards with a strangled yelp. She tried to turn back, screaming the name of one of her other companions stuck in the outpost, but a terrifying howl drowned her out before Carnis had to slice her again. The female fled, chased across the tundra in a spray of ice and snow with Strika on her heels.

Two down, two to go, Enerus thought, panting through the adrenaline pumping through his veins and the heat building up underneath his armor, and he backed away with a jab of his sword to gauge the distance between his opponent and the door. Carnis had darted away from the open entrance, running over to Clarit's side to break apart the bloody melee, and he forced both Canid and Ermehn apart with several well-timed blows. Strika was long gone into the snow.

Enerus lunged forward again, starting a crisscrossing duel of swords with his opponent, and he knocked them back a foot with sheer strength. Just as he rose out of a crouch, sword carving in an upward arc to block the Ermehn's stab at his face, everything failed him. The smell of burning armor filled his nose, drowning him; his arms locked up in one hideous spasm of his whole body beneath his skin, shaking violently in place as they refused to complete their block, and Enerus felt everything above his right eye obliterate in cloud of pain and blood as the Ermehn drove their dagger home in a flash of metal.

Something screamed, the taste of lighting filled the Canid's mouth and arced through the very tips of his fur, violent spots of color flooded his eyes, and the whole world came crashing down.


	3. Part III

Slowly, the darkness fled as dizzy circles ran their course underneath Enerus's scrunched eyelids when he tried to open them. A detached and vague buzzing feeling tingled up and down all of his limbs that weren't pressed into cold, hard floor, like his whole body had gone to sleep without him. The Canid could make out a blur of a grey ceiling above him through his cracked eyelids and arguing voices dying away nearby as he clumsily managed to lever his elbow under him. Pain shot through the side of his head.

With a slurred breath and the taste of ash in his mouth, Enerus came awake.

The world was a lot more unstable than he remembered it, every corner of the room spinning like the time he'd slipped down a mountain ravine and rolled down crashing through the snow, not knowing which way was up. The corners of the walls— how was there more than one corner where there should only be one?— slowly danced back and forth, crisscrossing each other as Enerus saw double. He roughly shook his head and clawed at his eyes, trying to get it to stop. All that did was summon up a jolt of pain that ran up the side of his brow, the familiar kind that Enerus knew lead to much slagging bigger injuries, and the Canid grit his teeth before forcing his calloused fingers up higher to feel the extent of the damage.

A swift paw lunged out, locking around his wrist to keep him from touching the source of his agony. Enerus blinked in surprise and tried to break their hold before he felt scratchy bandages against his skin and registered the light fur and dark markings floating in front of him that belonged to no Ermehn.

"Do not touch there," Carnis said. His healing kit was gone from his back, and Enerus realized it was lying open on the floor next to them. "You are cut."

The hard-gripping paw that Enerus had been trying to shrug off earlier neatly turned its fingers to feel his pulse. The grey-furred Canid's mind went blank for a moment as he struggled to put together the shards of his composure.

"Is anyone dead or injured?" Enerus said, forcing himself to sit up straighter. "Taken?" His voice sounded hoarse and unfamiliar to his ears. Waves of pain crawled up through his head, but that didn't matter; he was alive and breathing, the rest of his company came first. A guttering remnant of fear and energy crawled up his chest when he remembered Clarit slamming the hooded Ermehn against the wall with a feral snarl and bared teeth. Had the corner he'd woken up looking at had red splattered near it?

"We are all accounted for," Carnis said, reassuring his second-in-command. He rifled through his healing kit to check for something, but Enerus could feel one sharp eye on him at the same time. "Clarit has minor injuries, but I have taken care of them, and Strika has returned. They are outside the doors as we speak."

_The outpost._ Something clicked in Enerus's head that had refused to click before. They were still in the outpost.

"We are we still here?" Enerus growled, immediately trying to get up and scanning his environment. Ermehn had a nasty tendency to be on the extremes of things; they were either completely alone other than their close companions, or there was a whole damn tribe of them nearby. "No one did a perimeter check before we hit this place, there could be more—"

Settling in at the place where they'd just fought a bunch of them was bad, Enerus thought, staring at the pool of blood and the smears against the opposite wall and floor near him, and settling in at the place where they'd just killed a few of them was worse. He had no delusions about what had happened the beasts whose blood was spilt out on the ground. So much for their main objective of striking fear into the Ermehn instead of daggers.

Carnis frowned at Enerus, putting a firm paw against his shoulder to keep him from rising. "We have already taken care of that. Stay down, Enerus."

When he heard that said in that flat 'I-am-the-medic-so-you-will-listen' voice on top of the actual words, Enerus knew something had been screwed sideways more thoroughly than a Lutren dropped into the Desert of Zin.

"Taken care of that? How could've you and Strika taken care of it? The Ermehn only stabbed me in the top of the head and got me down for a few moments; a perimeter check would take—"

"Enerus, _down_," Carnis barked. He shoved against Enerus's shoulder harder. The other Canid glared at him with a bristling tail as he tried to get to his feet.

"Carnis, let me up," Enerus growled. He made direct eye contact with the smaller company member, turning it into a forceful, challenging stare. Carnis clenched his thin jaw and struggled to stare back properly. "That's a direct order from your Second."

"And this is a direct order from your acting medic to remain down," Carnis said, breaking his eye contact and gripping Enerus's shoulders with fingers as brittle and vice-like as ice. He forced the larger Canid to sit down on the floor with one push, and as Enerus saw the unyielding look that came with it before Carnis peeled his fingers from his shoulders, he knew nothing was going anywhere.

Especially not him, Enerus thought.

He felt a throb of pain through his head again. There were a lot of pressed bandages and stiff edges around the left side of his head for the one cut the Ermehn would've left him… and why was he down? Memories began to spark in the back of Enerus's head, struggling to escape the cloud of muck that was his senses. The ash taste on his tongue tingled again.

"…Carnis, what aren't you telling me?" Enerus said slowly. The medic was almost spastic, keeping his healing kit just about soldered to his hip despite the small injuries that had occurred, and Enerus far from liked the way the other Canid was studying him. Carnis paused. Something visibly weighed on his tongue as his ears twitched.

"When you were stabbed before going briefly unconscious, the Ermehn's dagger grazed your head deeply and severed the middle section of your right ear, as well as clipped away a chunk of the tissue," Carnis said. He was all ruthless business as he sat in front of Enerus, posture neat and straight. "I stitched your wound closed, and I was able to secure your ear to your head with bandages. There are currently no stitches holding the middle shut. Whether you would like the ear sewn and reattached or clipped off is your choice; the wound is the right size for either treatment to work."

"Why're you asking me?" Enerus said, eying him and remembering an incident back at the garrison. "You had no problem amputating that sentry's arm after the construction accident; he didn't really get a choice, and he was still conscious. I don't see the point in you saying nothing about an arm, but then stopping to ask about an ear."

At the thought of being still conscious, something whispered and nagged at the back of Enerus's head. He firmly shoved it back.

"Sentry Arvet's arm was unsalvageable in that event," Carnis said without hesitation, his voice crisp. "Your ear, however, is not— as well as having lower chances for infection— and I prefer to give choices when allowed."

Enerus narrowed his eyes. This all felt like a wild side chase for something, like Carnis was twisting him around another topic. They'd served together long enough for Eneris to notice the extra flick of Carnis's eyes when he looked at him and the soft shuffling of his fingers every few minutes or so. Nervousness, Enerus thought. Hesitation about something. The second-in-command frowned. He'd have to straighten out his Third and medic after this blasted ear thing was over with.

"There's an infection risk?" Enerus said. Carnis nodded.

"Yes, there always is. Not necessarily now, but by the time we reach our final checkpoint, the stitch line might fester. With all the traveling and fighting we have to do, the ear may be ripped off later on anyway."

"In that case, cut it off," Enerus said, gesturing at the swathe of bandages perched on his head. He growled at the slice of pain the movement sent through him. Cracking his head on the stone floor had left him with more of an aftershock of the Ermehn stab and… "I'm not going to get an infection in the forsaken wastes over an ear."

"Very well."

Carnis turned his attention away from him, digging through the healer bag again. His paws stalled in one place a little too long, and when he came up with a curved silver knife, Enerus had a feeling that he'd actually had the frostbitten thing waiting there. Just in case.

Eneris was already starting to unravel the bandages from around his ear when Carnis gave him a withering look, smacking the back of his paw with the knife hilt. Cursing under his breath at the new influx of stinging pain, Eneris let the lighter-furred Canid finish removing the bandages with a few flicks of the blade. They fell off in an almost neat heap, except for the blood dying them. Enerus was already gritting his teeth and bracing himself for the pain, but he felt none of the remaining shreds of his ear being cut through. He looked up at Carnis, who was hesitating.

"What?" Enerus said, struggling to keep a growl out of his words. The beginning of the mission had already been blundered enough; he didn't want to have to postpone this and make it worse when he bloody knew that Carnis was quick and efficient otherwise. He'd been fast enough to slap those bandages on in the few minutes Enerus was out. He could shear through the ear just as fast.

"The Ermehn blade only took out the thinnest middle section of your ear and part of the right," Carnis said. Enerus could feel him studying the limp thing on his head that must've been his ear. It burned when he shifted them, the right one wobbling instead of moving smoothly. "I'm going to have to cut through the two thicker parts on the side. You are definitely going to feel it. If you would like something to bite down on—"

"No," Enerus said. He straightened his back out, holding his head high. The Canid clenched his fists in his lap and gritted his teeth. This was a small amputation; it wasn't an arm or leg, and he didn't need a stinking stick in his mouth to bite down on. His fangs ached already. "I don't need it. Just do it."

Carnis took the irritation in Enerus's voice as a cue to get going, and the medic went silent. He moved up to kneel by the larger Canid's head, holding the knife in one paw and keeping the bandages from earlier in his lap, and Enerus momentarily felt a shiver cross his skin when the cold metal first brushed against it. Carnis neatly slipped the blade into the hole already made in his ear and sliced.

In one slash, half of the flesh threads holding Enerus's ear on were gone. He felt nothing at first, only a breeze against something wet that hadn't been before and the clipping feeling of something disappearing, and then the pain hit. Enerus grimaced at the sting as the remainder of his attached ear tried to flop over, making things worse, and then Carnis pragmatically moved on to the other part, and all sensation to the floppy lump of flesh the medic had in his paws died in a sharp bite of pain.

For a moment, Carnis looked confused as he stared at what once been Enerus's ear in his paw— the medic's eyes flickering all over the outpost— but when Enerus felt the blood from his fresh stump begin to dribble on his brow, Carnis made his decision. He threw the ear into one of the outpost corners behind his patient. It landed on the stone with a soft thump, sliding out of sight. Enerus raised his eyebrows at him. Carnis ignored his look and went to bandaging his stub.

"You know," Carnis said, speaking up after a small pause and a peek towards the corner where Enerus guessed his ear apparently was, "I hope you did not like that other earring."

Enerus waved him off as he wrapped another segment of bandage over his wound. "Eh, doesn't matter. I'll just stick with having one earring like you; s'not like I'd have any place to put the other one if I went and got it."

The grey-furred Canid leaned in while Carnis was still trapped bandaging his ear.

"Now then, Carnis, explain what you're keeping quiet to me about, and how the hell we ended up in here long enough for Clarit to clear out the Ermehn bodies and for Strika to do a perimeter check."

Carnis visibly balked, the hard line of his back wavering for a moment and his yellow eyes widening a fraction before they came under control. Enerus didn't miss the extra flinch of his tail behind him. He could read his company members like a book, Enerus thought, and Carnis was no exception.

"You—"

"Ya had a lock-up moment that turned into something else, and you blacked out harder than if ya took a Deltrada brick to the face."

Enerus jerked his head up, almost pulling off the last bit of bandage Carnis had wrapped and tied. Strika stood in the open outpost door, her fur lined with pieces of snow and ice. Behind her, the wind was beginning to pick up, sending snowflakes and slivers of cold skittering over the ground. Their leader walked in as Carnis finished the bandage, pulling away so that Enerus could look at Strika as she strode over to the wall.

"What are you talking about?" Enerus said. He stared as Strika refused to come closer, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed. A thin line of frozen blood trailed over her muzzle from a cut. "I didn't have a lock-up moment, or whatever the fangfire you're always calling them; I just got hit in the temple."

An odd look crossed Strika's face, her ears folding back for a moment as she studied the Canid on the floor. Enerus could see her lips twitch like she was dying to bare her teeth at him.

"Cut the garbage, Enerus, we all saw what happened," she barked. "Ya barely got stabbed by the Ermehn, and you were hitting the floor before then." Strika turned her glare on Carnis, who was suddenly like a lump of rock, positioned where he was without really meeting Strika's eyes. His face remained flat, but an uncomfortable squirm went through his body as she kept staring. "You said it wouldn't happen again."

"What wouldn't happen again?" Enerus snarled, locked out of the conversation and gazes being passed between Strika and the medic. He was right here; he could answer any damn questions about his health and fill in their leader just fine by himself! "I don't know what you two are talking about, but someone explain why the blazes we wasted time over a stab wound and I ended up on the floor!"

Carnis broke out of his uneasy stare with Strika and turned to Enerus with concern. "Wait a minute, you really do not remember what happened?"

"No," Enerus growled, frustrated and angry at the whole thing. For some reason, giving Carnis that answer and seeing his brows and patterned muzzle furrowing with worry made Enerus's stomach sink down to a place it shouldn't be. He remembered a burst of sound and a jolt of energy throughout him that definitely wasn't fight adrenaline. "I got stabbed by the Ermehn, and that was it. Now I'm patched up, we're here, and I don't know why the slag we haven't moved out yet."

Carnis was looking at him with something between mortification and a grim curiosity. The medic moved slowly, finishing winding up a roll of bandage he'd had out earlier.

"Enerus, you have been unconscious for nearly an hour."

Enerus stared.

"What?" he managed to get out. Brief little memories of waking up from a sleep he'd never fallen into or suddenly seeing things change or be in different places when they hadn't before picked through his head. Enerus hatefully pushed them back.

"During the fight, you… seized up," Carnis said, carefully choosing his words. Strika looked on the verge of snorting and telling him to move on, but Enerus could practically smell her uneasiness and she how she was constantly shifting her weight. "One moment, you were in combat with the Ermehn, and the next, you completely froze and began to go through muscle spasms. I managed to peel the Ermehn off you, but you were untouchable by that point. When Clarit and Strika finished and returned, you were still unconscious."

"Why the tundrafrost didn't you haul me up and head for the forest, then?" Enerus snapped. Nothing was making sense, and everything was slowly shattering. "None of us knew whether or not the iceslickers we chased off were alone; they could've brought down a whole tribe on the company!"

"We couldn't move you," Strika said. She cast a look at Carnis. "Medic's orders. Said it might finish unscrewing whatever the hell was already coming undone in your head." Strika narrowed her eyes at Enerus, and he bared the edges of his teeth back, sensing her rising aggression. "But if ya wanted us to leave you here to flop around and whimper in the front of the Ermehn— like you _always _do— ya should've told us beforehand."

"Strika," Carnis warned.

"I— no. NO," Enerus said, struggling to his feet above Carnis's protests. He violently wrenched his arm away from medic's grip when he tried to hold him down again, glaring at both Strika and Carnis as her words from earlier clicked. '_You said this wasn't going to happen again.' _"I did not have a seizure, I have _never _had a goddamn seizure, and there is NOTHING permanently wrong with me," Enerus snarled. "You should've followed mission orders like always; nothing would've changed."

"If I could've, I would've, but I had a stinking soldier gurgling to himself and rolling around on the floor like a concussed whelp!" Strika spat. She was coming off the wall now, arms uncrossing and hackles bristling as she marched closer to Enerus. Her eyes were alight with fury. "'Follow mission orders' my tail; do you _know _what ya caused? Carnis had to slit the goddamn Ermehn's throat to get it off of you, which left Clarit with the other northern scum, and she went ahead and finished the job up to keep him from tripping up over ya while you were useless on the floor! That's two Ermehn dead against orders," Strika ranted, "not to mention that they burned the fragging message they were carrying while everyone else was busy with you!"

Enerus's growing rage and snarl was immediately dampened under surprise. He stared, his remaining ear perking straight up in shock and his stub burning. Strika looked back at him with the disgust of a drill instructor whose student had failed them.

"They were carrying a message? To who?" Enerus said. A jolt ran through him. Tensions with the Ermehn were high already, and if they were relaying genuine paper messages between tribes or to someone else in the tundra, it didn't mean well.

For Ermehn, paper was rare, and only used if the message was something that was too important to be let known to others if dropped. Anything written on a scroll would self-destruct under the tundra's icy rain and wind if it was set free.

"I don't know," Strika said. She rubbed the bridge of her muzzle, warping the cut over her snout for a moment. Their leader suddenly looked tired, armored shoulders slumping and flecks of ice dotting her brown fur. Her legs were practically soaked from the amount of snow she'd gone bounding through to chase the other Ermehn off. "It was written in Ermehn script, and there was a decent chunk of orders, assuming that's what they were. That's about all I got from the paper shreds Clarit dug out of the ashes." Strika gave a harsh laugh. "Both the cornered Ermehn and the pathetic fire they made were dying, but trust them to burn one last thing before they both snuffed out."

"I thought I smelled something burning," Enerus said, sniffing in disgust.

He realized too late that he'd said something condemning himself when Carnis looked at him with a sudden realization.

"Enerus, how many times have you smelled something burning this mission?"

"What?" Enerus said, blinking in surprise and turning away from Strika before both of their aggressive tempers and fur could bristle again.

"Just answer the question," Carnis said. He splayed his paws and pushed his fingers together impatiently. "How many times have you smelled something burning?"

Enerus frowned, putting his thoughts together. Weak memories were finally being dredged up through mental sludge on top of everything else. "Two times. When we were pairing off and hitting the outpost, I could smell it the whole time, and the last time I caught a whiff of it, it was sometime on the way here. Don't remember exactly where."

"Would it have been behind the rock cliff before we took off?" Carnis asked quietly. Strika looked up sharply.

Enerus mentally cursed himself and wanted to shake the dark markings off the other Canid's face.

He'd complained about smelling things burning before, about catching whiffs of the scent of leathery armor on fire on places where they were none, and always, Strika gave him a chastising stare a few minutes later and snapped something about locking up or told him to get his haunches in gear.

Enerus had smelled it plenty of times.

"Alright, that's it," Strika said. Enerus snapped his head up to look at her as his leader moved to the outpost door with her jaw set and eyes dangerously bright. She flung it open. Cold leaked in with a spray of nipping wind and snowflakes. "CLARIT, GET OVER HERE IN POSITION AND PREPARE TO MOVE OUT!" Strika roared at a distant figure out in the snow. She turned back to Carnis and Enerus. "Both of you. Up. We're moving out. We take off after those fleeing Ermehn now. I call the marching positions when we're all together. Right now, I need to speak to my acting Second."

Enerus immediately moved forward with his armored shoulders held back in rough pride before he realized Strika was heading away from him for the open door. Something clanged against his ribs that had nothing to do with his metal chest plate.

_No._

Strika almost made it out the door before Enerus cut her off and slammed his paw against the doorframe. She glared at the Canid who'd stopped her as his sudden appearance put them in close proximity.

"Your acting Second is right here," Enerus growled. Strika's eyes narrowed dangerously.

"Enerus, move_,_" she said. Enerus could hear an ominous growl building up inside his leader that rose up through her throat and reverberated through every one of her tense, hard muscles underneath her armor, her tail slowly beginning to prickle and ears pinning back, but he couldn't make himself back off. Not now; not over this, not when his position was being peeled from him for nothing.

As Enerus didn't back away, and his own ears began to pin back with a low, gravely growl leaking from between his teeth, Carnis packed up his medic bag in the back of the outpost, refusing to look at either of them. His tail was pressed closer between his legs and he gave a furtive glance towards the back door of the outpost.

"No," Enerus said, teeth bared.

He realized he'd overstepped his line when Strika lunged forward, holding him against the doorframe with her forearm. Enerus gave a strangled yelp as a chainmail sleeve bit into his throat.

"That was a direct order from your leader," Strika snarled, shoving her face up in his and making him squirm as personal space was eaten up for intimidation. "MOVE."

Enerus shrank against the stone, Strika only releasing him when she realized the amount of pain his sliced open head and cut-off ear was giving him. She tried to step through the door again when Enerus lurched out in front of her, desperately trying to keep her back, and Strika turned on him with a genuine snarl that she usually reserved for Ermehn. He'd gone too far questioning her authority twice.

"Wait," Enerus said, raising his paws in surrender with his voice hoarse, as if the chainmail Strika had pinned up against him moments ago was now rubbing all over the inside of his throat. Strika paused, seeing the slump of Enerus's ears and the dip of his tail that signaled respect for a leader. It was the only thing keeping her from grinding him into the rock and showing him who was in charge and why.

"We're wasting time," Strika said. Enerus could see her jaw working as she ground her teeth in effort to keep herself in check, and she was looking at him like he was a Canid who'd been thrown at her straight out of another company, not her Second who'd saved her hide and backed her up more times than they could count. "Clarit's already buried the Ermehn— _which we shouldn't have had to fragging bury, via mission orders_— and we've got twenty more miles to cover before sundown. We've lost an hour of daylight thanks to ya and your screw-ups and there's a chance you can't function; give me _one _good reason why you should stay acting Second."

Enerus stared back at her, fighting to keep himself assertive instead of aggressive. Fights with Strika would go nowhere but down. "You need a tough Second up front, and Carnis can't take the muck," he said. Behind him, Carnis pointedly continued packing his kit. "That leaves Clarit open for the position, and do you think she's going to keep her head on straight another fight when you send her in to cover for you and the smell of Ermehn blood gets up her nose?"

"She'd keep it on straighter than you," Strika spat. "At least I can trust her to stay on her feet."

Enerus fought back a growl at her stinging comment, choosing to raise his head higher in defiance and keep pressing on. The winter air greedily tearing at the open door started clawing at both of them.

"And for everything else?" he said. "When we have to bluff off the nomads instead of fighting them, or go through a tactical maneuver? If you can't trust your Second, you can't trust yourself."

There was a long silence after Enerus had spoken, both he and Strika almost toe-to-toe and their chest plates separated by nothing by a paw's width of space. Two sets of yellow eyes stared each other down. Carnis watched from the back, his healing kit slung on his back. Enerus could feel his uneasy gaze on both of them, but he didn't dare turn around to see what the other Canid was doing, focusing only on staring down Strika. His fur rose on end.

Finally, Enerus looked away first. Strika pulled away from him and stepped out into the snow. She stopped to retrieve the spear she'd left leaning on the doorframe as Enerus looked up tensely. Clarit waited outside, motionless, wordless, and as unreadable an animal as ever. Enerus didn't know how long she'd been there listening.

"Carnis, take Third," Strika said. She slung the spear over her shoulder, stepping into action and beginning their trek through the ice back towards the trees, where more cover lay. "Clarit, Rearguard. I'll take Point. Enerus, Second."

All of them stepped into position, and Enerus could feel his heart pounding and a wordless sigh of relief uncurling inside him as he moved behind Strika. She paused, turning around to give him a dangerous glare. _No mistakes._

"If ya freeze up even once, you're done," she said. Her voice had a snap in it as hard as some of the teethed pit traps the Ermehn laid for patrolling Canid. "I'm not going to compromise everyone else's safety for a useless Second."

"Understood," Enerus growled back fiercely. Strika turned her back on him and continued to walk on before he'd even finished.

The company of Canid took formation and continued their patrol through the rock and faster falling snow.


	4. Part IV

Even with Strika and Enerus's confrontation before they took off, the company of Canid quickly fell into their old steps again. Strika had to clear a few more branches from the patrol path due to a storm a week ago, and like always, Enerus, Clarit, and Carnis tossed aside what they could and made sure their way back wasn't blocked.

It'd definitely be after they were returning along it, Enerus thought, pulling his hood over his face to keep ice from blowing into his eyes. His stitched head and cut off ear burned. The picking up wind and snowfall coming from the slate-grey sky promised more problems ahead. Strika trudged over a slick rock at the foot of a slope in front of them. Enerus grimaced and said nothing about the flecks of cold that peppered his neck from her stomp up the hill.

They might've fallen into their old positions again, Enerus thought, following Strika up the hill, but they sure as frostbite weren't as functional as usual. No one had said a word other than replying to barked orders for a sentry check now and then after they'd taken off from the outpost and returned to the pine forest along the mountain line. Any banter was eaten by silence, and all the Canid grimly focused on working their way through the trees and towards the direction the living Ermehn had fled.

There was a clatter from behind as Clarit kicked aside a lose rock, reaching the base of the hill Strika and Enerus had already climbed and Carnis was ascending. Enerus moved aside at the top to let the medic move on to flatter ground. They gave no acknowledgement to each other.

In spare moments, Enerus could feel the other Canid watching him, particularly Carnis. The Third shifted behind him with every step, monitoring each movement, and his second-in-command ignored the extra little glances towards his stitched head and footsteps. Putting up the hood at least prevented Carnis from quietly finding something else to look at.

As far as the Strikfang sisters were concerned, Enerus had gotten enough out of both of them, particularly the older one. Enerus tried not to grit his teeth. He fell in line behind Strika again just as she paused. The grey-furred Canid had to dig his feet into the ground to keep from running into his leader, not wanting as to so much bloody touch her at this point. Clarit lifted her nose in the air and sniffed as Strika knelt down, touching a flash of color in the snow before standing and moving on.

Enerus followed after her, his eyes flickering down to see a soft red footprint before he stepped over it. Ermehn. Cut paw. Two of the Ermehn had ran— one of them fleeing at the very beginning of the brawl and the other being driven out by Carnis— but either way, one of the smaller and more naïve ones they'd been fighting had made the mistake of crossing the Canid patrol line during their escape. The spots of blood littered around the snow were better than any map.

Carnis delicately moved around the footprint after Enerus took a stride over it, and Clarit paused to kneel and almost press her muzzle into it with her bulky shoulders in the air like a monster wearing Canid armor. Enerus didn't have to look back to see the predatory look on her face, something similar to the stare he'd felt boring into his back and making his hackles bristle multiple times in the trip.

It was… uncomfortable. Enerus looked ahead to try and spot more of the Ermehn footprints before Strika could.

Their Rearguard wouldn't do anything, but Clarit had been quietly eying Enerus the whole time during the march as if he'd just ripped his stinking entrails out in the outpost and then took off with them hanging out of his belly— which she'd know a lot about. Unlike Carnis, she didn't bother to disguise her staring.

Clarit thought 'subtlety' meant smashing someone's damn face in with a rock, Enerus thought, almost snorting at his thought. No wonder she didn't look away. He thought she was a freak, and now she thought he was one; it all worked out blasted great. At least he could give her that: she was being honest and bluntly staring at him, unlike her fragging sister.

The wind blew extra hard and whistled past the Canid's ears, trying to rip the hood from Enerus's face as Strika turned around to address them, her cloak whipping back and forth in the gale. Tufts of white blew over the crusty snow and buried themselves hungrily into the sides of rocks and forming snowdrifts.

"From here on out, we lose the Ermehn footprints," Strika said. The gale viciously whipped back and forth her fur and pierced ears, the metal hoops at the base of them glittering dimly in the light. "We stick to the patrol path; there's more cover nearby. If the Ermehn had any sense, they'd follow the tree line and look for shelter nearby. We don't know their main numbers. Keep your guard up and eyes peeled for them, or they're going to peel your eyes for ya with daggers of theirs," she barked. Clarit and Carnis nodded, the latter pulling his cloak around him closer. Enerus felt a hard glare directed personally at him. His fingers curled tighter around his spear.

"Alright, keep your fragging tails moving," Strika said, satisfied that everyone had heard her. She turned back around to take point again, but not before Enerus caught another little look at him.

The Canid kept moving, picking up some more speed as the hardening snow gave the heavier soldiers more purchase, and everyone had their spears out, whether for using as walking sticks or warily holding over their shoulders with narrowed eyes towards the inside of the forest. The Ermehn were cunning about navigating their wretched environment. Trusting the Northern Wastes too long had a nasty tendency to get soldiers killed, Enerus thought. He felt his nose going numb.

A maze of dark pine needles and striped bark greeted the Canid as the forest thickened again, the deep maw of the woods only broken by snowdrifts and jagged rocks peaking up. Enerus could literally feel the sky above them spitting more snow down on their heads with every moment.

"Enerus," Carnis said quietly. The smaller Canid's white puff of breath was ripped out of his mouth by the wind before it could float away.

"Carnis, report," Enerus said, keeping his eyes on Strika's back. He'd heard Clarit and Carnis conferring over something behind his back for the past several minutes. He had no doubt Strika had, too.

"The last Ermehn footprints we saw before the wind picked up were heading up the closest ridge on the tree line," Carnis said. "There is little to no shelter from the elements on the other side of it, and it stretches out beyond the point of the close-knit forest here."

"Meaning?" Enerus said, but his jaw was already locking stubbornly and pressing into a grim line. Clarit sped up for a moment, lowering her broad head to speak to her other companions better. Strika's ears were tilting back to listen in.

"The patrol path follows close to the ridge for leeway," Clarit said. "There's no tree cover out near the end."

Clarit looked down at her arm as if she could see her bulky size and how much her dark fur stood out against everything else in the wastes. Enerus grimaced. An ambush was up ahead, and probably with long-range weapons on higher ground. Bloody fantastic. If the two Ermehn were really alone with no one besides their friends Clarit and Carnis had killed, then they wouldn't be crossing to the other side of the ridge; they'd be sticking near to the more sheltered parts and running off.

"Stay close to the trees or rocks all you can before we reach the forest edge," Enerus ordered. "When we get there, Clarit, keep in the back and hold close to whatever cover you can. We'll send a scout to distract them and get around the end of the ridge and take the group out before they can get themselves together. _On a signal,_" he warned, growling at the expectant look that flashed across the vanguard's face.

Carnis nodded, dropping back into his position with Clarit, and Strika broke out of her pause to pick up the pace for the company again. She said nothing about his arrangements. Enerus trudged on behind her with his head tilted up, half daring her to object on the basis of his frostbitten 'lock-up moments', and half scared of what that would mean if she did. Strika— thankfully— did nothing. Nothing new, anyway, Enerus thought, feeling another glance passed at him a minute or two later as the company trod over a spot slick with ice.

Strika hadn't snapped at him or said anything to him whatsoever once they'd moved out again, but there was no shortage of quick peeks being thrown his way whenever Enerus wasn't openly looking at her. Enerus didn't know what they quite were, but there was something in them that was tense as hell, even if their leader didn't look it. It was worse than getting stared at by Clarit. Strika— who'd always been up front and witnessed the horrors Ermehn could visit on Canid prisoners firsthand— seemed almost… scared when she glanced at him. Unsure of something.

Then her eyes would flick away, and nothing was there but tough Strika, and Enerus made himself stop paying attention to stupid things that had no meaning.

Their trek continued, and Enerus could feel the strain bottling up in all of them as they approached the ice field up ahead, following the craggy ridge that the Ermehn had apparently clambered over so far back. Walking right into an ambush was sometimes necessary to draw the little groups of Ermehn out, but it wasn't something Enerus liked any better each time he did it. He drew an icy breath through his teeth as the temperature kept seesawing up and down the cold scale and the wind began to howl.

If they'd have been dealing with a whole tribe, Enerus thought, the Ermehn wouldn't have bothered pulling the ridge trick; they'd have just wiped the patrol out.

The end of the thick forest loomed, and Enerus wondered why the fangfire he'd been worried about snowblindness earlier when the sun wasn't even showing through the blanket of flat grey over the sky. Strika raised up her paw to call a halt, staring intently at the point of the ridge that extended alongside the ice field. The sound of footsteps crunching in the snow died away.

"They're trying to pull an ambush on us, so their numbers are small," Strika said. "It's a slag of a pity none of us have bows, but we can deal with them if we get them in spear range." She turned her eyes to Carnis. "Kit off, Carnis; pass it over. You're playing decoy to get them peeking over the ridge. Stay near the edge of the clearing and zigzag; ya should make it out in one piece."

"Understood."

Carnis unstrapped his healer's kit, giving it to their leader. He bent and jerked his feet bandages tight to prevent anything from coming loose in the middle of playing bait. Carnis was light; he'd be able to run over the top of the crusty ice and snow without sinking in as much. Arrow dodging would be easier.

Strika turned to Clarit. The other Canid's back was stiff, but she didn't focus on staring at the ridge like the rest of them. She knew it was no use with the Ermehn hidden and her terrible eyesight.

"Clarit, you're back-up. I'm not dealing with a walking pincushion today. Keep in the thicker part of the trees and add in some howling if ya think it'll get the tattoo-pelts to moving their tails faster."

"Yes, Strika," Clarit said, ears flicking back in displeasure before she composed herself. Strika let the motion pass. Clarit would've been more satisfied with a direct order to claw her way up the ridge and drag out the Ermehn herself, Enerus thought with grim amusement. Forsaken vanguard animal.

Their leader finally turned to Enerus, and he was surprised to find his shoulders squared and tail prickling stiffly behind him without his knowledge. He stared back at Strika when her eyes moved to his face, and for a split second, their gazes at each other were practically flinty. Strika broke out of the unplanned stare down to cross her arms.

"Enerus, you've got built in camo and the next best set of eyes I can send up there," she said, inclining her head at his grey fur. "Double back around the trail we just took and climb up our ridge side after Carnis starts his little jig. When the Ermehn heads begin popping up, give them a taste or two of your spear. Clarit and I 'll take care of any that slip and roll down."

Strika gave him a pointed look that said she damn well expected some of them to come tumbling, and not a single stinking misstep or lock-up on the way there, _or else_. Clarit cracked her knuckles before picking up her spear.

"On it," Enerus said, flashing the corner of his fangs at the challenge in both the mission and Strika's face. Strika smacked her spear into her open paw with menacing clank.

"Then everyone move out," she said, stalking into her position in the trees around the ice field. "Carnis, hit the field when I signal ya."

Clarit headed after Strika as Carnis took a deep breath, preparing to step out into the exposed plain. Enerus saw him going into a crouch with fiercely narrowed eyes before the grey-furred Canid lost sight of him to the trees and trodden-through snow.

Enerus took off down the path he and his company had cleared merely minutes ago, squashing the coat of fresh snowflakes littering it into smeared rounds. He didn't bother to keep quiet, using only minimum stealth as he ran over old footprints and panted into the freezing air. It bit at his newly stitched wound, trying to crawl between the cracks in his clanging armor and clothes as Enerus got far back enough and began to climb up the side of the ridge. The Canid grunted as he jammed his toes and fingers into icy rock pockets and hauled himself up.

The ridge was a smooth, easily traversable slope on the other side the Ermehn had approached on, if a bit exposed to the weather. This side was buffered, but had a cliff face twice as high as Enerus before it turned into a similarly gentle slope halfway up. One little cliff climb and assault, and this mission was done with, Enerus thought. He ruthlessly ignored the screaming in one of his arms and pulled himself up another increment.

Strika and his company had seen him fail once. They would NOT be seeing it again.

A minute of climbing later, and Enerus had his chin pressed into snow and the side of a bumpy bolder as he hauled himself up onto the slope part of the ridge. The Canid immediately got to his feet and undid his dark cloak, tying it securely around his waist. He needed to rely on the color of his fur now, not the shade of his uniform. The wind on the other side of the ridge screamed and whistled, tearing at the heat of Enerus's exposed back as he disregarded it and began to sneak across the slope on his side towards where the Ermehn were hiding, his spear in paw.

Another patrol member whose company Strika's team occasionally crossed paths with had told Enerus that the Ermehn had a saying about harsh wind: it howled to tell the Canid to come home, to return to the Northern Wastes they'd rightfully existed in, and to give the Ermehn back the land they had stolen from them. Enerus and the other patrol member had had a good laugh over that and two tankards of throat-scorching ale.

Now, with that howling wind the Ermehn had been speaking off playing havoc with Enerus's new stub of an ear and trying to send ice flecks into his eyes as he crept closer to his quarry, it didn't seem so funny. When he glanced to the side, Enerus could see the edge of ice plain from behind the trees, and something beginning to gradually move along the corners. Carnis was starting out, he thought. The Ermehn were close. And they were waiting for the slender Canid below to get closer.

Enerus gritted his teeth and exposed his set of fangs to the side of the slope with a pinned back ear as he navigated closer. Cold seared his gums. The waste-wandering scum were about to get more Canid up close than they'd ever want.

He slipped closer, moving in a crouch so that the Ermehn on the other side of the ridge couldn't see him, and as Carnis gave a yelp of surprise, jumping over an arrow that narrowly missed burying into his leg and dodging away from the one that came an instant later, everything happened at once.

The faint smell of something burning faded from Enerus's nose just as he realized it had even existed, and then the dye-lined face of an Ermehn was there almost directly next to him where it hadn't been before along with a drawn-back bow, and a scream echoed over the ice field.

Carnis had been creeping along the edges of the field like Strika had ordered, acting as if he was a lone Canid only sent ahead to scout things out. He had played the part perfectly and looked warily around every few minutes or so while he walked, keeping his paw on his sword like he was on guard for Ermehn… until the first stray arrow had almost kneecapped him.

He'd bolted immediately, leaping, zigzagging and weaving all he could without vanishing into the trees, feeling the hard ground beneath him with every stride and jarring land he made, and then Enerus had finally come into view, sneaking right towards where the Ermehn archer was hiding as they drew another arrow.

Carnis hesitated a split second in his run, convinced Enerus was going to take the Ermehn out. He was in direct range, and the Ermehn didn't know a Canid was right around the other side of the ridge.

Only two feet away, Enerus got a blank look on his face and locked up. He was as motionless as one of the snow-coated rocks he was climbing on. The Ermehn— whose craggy dyed face Carnis could finally see— let lose an arrow that shouldn't have flown.

Carnis tried to dodge too late.

The smaller Canid yelped in pain and surprise as an arrow caught him directly in the juncture of his shoulder armor and chest plate, burying itself deeply into his torso. He fell out of his leap, slamming into the ice in a writhing mass of limbs and blood, and as Carnis desperately scrambled to his feet on the slippery ground— making it a stride away— another arrow thudded into him not a half paw's width above the first. Carnis dropped onto his knees and screamed. Blood and fur smeared across the white tundra.

Enerus swore violently, watching Carnis wobble and thrash on the ground and hearing Clarit roar for him, and the archer Ermehn realized there was a Canid nearby. They spun around, eyes wide with surprise, but Enerus didn't give them chance to recover. He charged the last stretch of space and brought his spear down against their head with a sickening crack. Snow sprayed over the side of the ridge as another Ermehn screamed and their partner tumbled over face-first onto Enerus's side.

With a snarl, Enerus yanked the dazed Ermehn up by a fistful of their fur and cloak and slammed his knee into their stomach. He flipped their body over the side of the ridge and let them tumble down in a ball of tangled limbs and a flopping neck and tail. There was another crack as the Ermehn hit the ice field below facedown, blood curling over the slick surface from their nose, and Enerus clawed over the top to the other side of the ridge as more furious Ermehn popped up. With a snarl, he locked arms with another archer, their bow clattering to the ground before they could fill him with arrows. Both beasts stared at each other with hate, arms shivering as they struggled to push each other over the other sides of the ridge crest.

On the ice field, Clarit took off like a catapulted ballista load the instant she saw Enerus make his move. She grabbed Carnis, pulling the gasping Canid to his feet and carrying him back to the trees even as more arrows came firing right on her heels. Strika shot off across the open ground, her brown fur nothing but a blur against the snow as she drew back her spear and threw it as hard as she could towards the chaos. A wounded Ermehn preparing to slit open Enerus's belly was driven back with a shriek as the explosion of snow from the spear Strika had thrown blinded her and the nearby archer.

Enerus was still locked together with the other Ermehn, both of them snarling as their faces almost ground together with the pure effort of trying to make the other give in first. Enerus could almost feel his fingers shattering under the Ermehn's grip when a howl split the air, and another element of chaos hit the ridge and clawed up its side, snarling the whole way.

Clarit had left Carnis lying back in the trees, and in the few second doorway Strika had given her, she'd managed to charge across most of the exposed ground. She hit the side of the ridge like a miniature storm all on her own, tossing her spear to Strika and climbing up the side of the short cliff. Since they were near the end, it wasn't as steep as where her second-in-command had to ascend, and just as Enerus thought that he and the Ermehn were about to break each other's paws, an iron grip locked around his ankle and yanked him down the side of the slope.

Enerus yelped in surprise with the Ermehn cursing with him, and both of them lost their footholds, the two enemies only feeling their crushing grip on each other as they tumbled down in a blur of snow and rock slamming into their backs. One of the Ermehn yelled the name of their fallen companion, but it sounded like a distorted shriek in Enerus's ears. The next thing he felt was a crunch of warm flesh and bone as he landed right on top of the Ermehn he'd shoved down the side of the ridge, further breaking them, and then Strika had her claws sunk into his arms as she dragged him to his feet and practically threw him towards the trees.

"GO, GO!" she roared, twirling her new spear and stabbing at one of the Ermehn's legs above her as they futilely cursed and screamed, trying to get down to their bulky friend who was entangled with Clarit in a snarling mess of cloaks, teeth, and punches.

Three more Ermehn appeared, and Enerus barely had time to register their faces and the dye stripes over the bridges of their muzzles before he took off across the ice field. The Canid could feel his messily beating heart in his mouth. Hot liquid metal ran out the side of his lips and dampened his tongue as he made it to the trees.

Strika blocked a spear blow at her face with a snarl, staring down the same Ermehn that she'd chased away from the outpost straight after her friend. Tears of anger and hate were boiling up in the female nomad's eyes as she took another vicious swipe at Strika's face from her higher ground, and as the three other Ermehn began to slide down the sides of the ridge, Strika realized she and Clarit were heavily outnumbered by themselves, and their medic was out of action. They had no choice.

"Clarit! CLARIT!" Strika yelled, trying to ward off more stabs to her face with her spear. Her sister paid her no heed, she and the Ermehn she'd dragged down along with Enerus slugging it out against the ridge wall.

Clarit's nose was busted, blood freely pouring down her thick jaw and dotting her silver chest plate, but she grabbed the struggling Ermehn by the neck and shoulder and wrenched him towards her just as he drove a knee into her belly. Clarit gurgled on her growl, drew her head back, and slammed her skull against his. There was another crack of a breaking nose and colliding bone. The gasping and disorientated Ermehn still managed to drive a punch into her throat. He was as hardheaded as her.

"GODDAMNIT, CLARIT, I'M NOT GOING TO DIE BECAUSE OF YA AND YOUR STUPID INSTINCTS!" Strika snarled, ducking another blow to her face. She almost ended up as earless as Enerus. The leader threw herself at Clarit and the Ermehn, shoving them apart with a blow of her spear and making sure they stayed that way with an extra jab, and once Clarit had snapped out of it, both Canid fled across the ice field. The war cries of enraged and grieving Ermehn followed them.

"Retreat!" Strika said, seeing Enerus lifting Carnis to his feet with one of the injured medic's arms around his neck, "RETREAT! Back further to the trees! GO!"

For a moment, Enerus refused to register her words, and then he saw the look on Strika's face that said she was going to drive her spear into his stomach if he'd locked up. He immediately turned around with a blanching and raggedly breathing Carnis clutching tighter to his neck, and both company members ran for more cover, one of them yelping with every step as two arrow shafts bounced up and down within them as they moved. Strika and Clarit ran directly after Enerus and Carnis, a few last arrows hissing through the air as they pursued their retreating companions out. Ermehn war cries were turned into ones of victory as they realized what the Canid were doing. The calls echoed out over the ice field and pursued Enerus out as thoroughly as the smell of burning had pursued away his senses before.

The Canid patrol sent out to intimidate the Ermehn masses was chased back in humiliation, splattering drops of blood across the tundra from their wounds as they went.


	5. Part V

By the time Enerus had helped Carnis stagger away far back enough into the trees for cover, the other Canid was shaking, and blood was starting to dribble out over the edges of his chest plate and soak into his robe underneath. The low temperature threatened to freeze everything into red icicles once the remaining heat had fled. They couldn't let that happen, Enerus thought, helping Carnis sit and immediately beginning to assess the wound.

"No, do not!" Carnis snapped, shoving away Enerus's paw from the arrow shafts as he reached for them. "Do not— do not break them off," he said hollowly. Carnis looked faintly sick, his fur puffed up at jagged angles that fit nowhere in his usual reactions. "If you break them off, we could lose the arrowheads, and I may die."

"Right," Enerus said, inwardly biting himself at forgetting rule one of treating arrow wounds: _whatever you do, don't yank, and don't lose the heads._ "Carnis, sit tight. We need to get the armor off from around the arrows if we're going to take those things out."

Carnis grimaced, and Enerus heard the crunching of snow behind him that signaled Strika and Clarit arriving behind them. Clarit made an odd noise in the back of her throat as Carnis began to undo his shoulder armor straps with trembling paws. Enerus went to work on the chest plate, impatiently yanking apart the lower strap of the armor that wasn't near Carnis's wound. Carnis drew a ragged breath as the movement shook the arrows buried in his muscle. The shoulder armor he'd worked on removing fell to the snow.

When Enerus grabbed the chest plate and pulled it off, Carnis done with clumsily undoing the upper strap of the armor, the metal shell peeled back to reveal a blood-soaked robe underneath. It clung to the medic's slightly heaving ribs, the upside-down yellow V on his robe beginning to turn an off-orange color around the edges. The torn material tangled around the wooden shafts poking from his shoulder. Fangfire, not good, Enerus thought, cursing under his breath as he saw how little of the arrows were poking out of Carnis. They were buried deep and solid. Getting them out was going to be a pain, especially for the medic.

"Enerus, MOVE," a voice growled, and Enerus found himself roughly shoved aside. He landed on his side on the snow. Enerus looked up, seeing Strika kneeling in the place where he'd been before. Behind them, Clarit licked her blood off her lips and nursed her broken nose, holding a wad of bandages to it.

Strika didn't so much as give a glance to her fallen second-in-command, ignoring him as he got up and moved away to give them space. Something stung in Enerus's jaws when he clenched them while watching Strika, and he realized the corner of his lip was split open and sending a dribble of coppery blood down the side of his mouth. He gruffly wiped it away with the back of his paw.

Carnis watched Strika as she lowered his healing kit to the ground, opening it. The medic's mouth flinched in knowing pain as Strika drew out the same little knife that had been used to cut off Enerus's ear not hours ago. In a few slashes of the blade and rough tears of the female's paws, the part of the uniform around the arrow wounds was ripped back. Enerus caught a short glimpse of pooled crimson and slick peels of wet fur before Strika moved and covered Carnis's wound from sight.

"Carnis, I'm not a medic here; give me an assessment," Strika said, observing the double wounds. Carnis raised a paw and drew his fingers in a circle around the sunken arrows. His paws were shaking, Enerus thought.

"Cut around the shafts," Carnis said, his voice not as strong as usual. Enerus could see the glaze of adrenaline and pain beginning to overtake his eyes. "Stick your fingers down into the wound to find the arrow heads; afterwards, cut the muscle around them and pull them out. Do not… do not remove them before," Carnis said, wincing and gritting his teeth. His paws curled into clenched claws in the snow. "I think they are barbed."

"On it," Strika said, the tips of her teeth bared in disgust and anger at the Ermehn's weapon of choice. She poised the knife over Carnis's wounds, watching the medic go stiff and brace himself with glazed eyes. "Clarit, Enerus, both of ya are on sentry duty; make sure the Ermehn aren't following us. Get going," she said, and Enerus felt a snap in her final words that lashed out just at him. Combine it with Carnis's drawn face, the Canid looking smaller with two arrows sticking out of him, and Enerus suddenly just wanted to run into some Ermehn following them so he could _hit _something.

Clarit nodded, turning on her heel and lumbering out further into the forest to keep out. Enerus followed behind her, his arms and shoulders stiff. Splattered red drops sunken into the snow from he and Carnis's limp back drew a map through the tundra floor.

Just as Strika prepared to cut into Carnis's shoulders, the Canid's other paw shot up and blocked her. "Wait!" he said, eyes wider and a tiny crack at the bottom of his usually composed voice. Strika paused, giving him a look.

Carnis shakily leaned away from her and pulled a wooden stick from the healing kit before she started. He shoved the branch between his teeth and bit down, his ears pinning back in a mix of fear and pain. Strika gave him a bitter smile of understanding that looked more like a wordless showing of her fangs.

"C'mon, soldier, let's get those damn things out of you," she said. Enerus heard the words drifting out behind him and Clarit, even in the blowing wind. He picked up a stride and bypassed the other Canid as they went to find a suitable place to stand sentry. They heard the first of Carnis's choked whimpers before they got out of earshot.

The amount of time it took to remove the arrowheads from Carnis was long, stretched, and miserable. For Enerus, it seemed to go on for hours and hours, and the howling wind and specks of ice being spat in his face by the wastes along with everything else made it worse.

He and Clarit took turns circling the perimeter, making sure there were going to be no surprise Ermehn paying them a visit. They crossed paths after every round, nodding heads at each other and exchanging a few brusque words about 'all clear' or 'saw nothing.' There was no excess speaking unless you counted the wind screeching in his ear, Enerus thought. He stabbed his spear into the ground harder than he needed to for using it as a walking stick. The two Canid on sentry exchanged mute nods as they passed again.

Both Enerus and Clarit stayed as far away as possible from where Strika was operating on Carnis. Enerus said nothing about how Clarit slowly licked the remainders of blood from the sides of her mouth and the constant silent looks she kept giving towards the trees where Carnis was; Clarit said nothing about how Enerus stomped more than he walked and the new split knuckles he had from snarling with anger and punching a tree. The brand of shared silence between them was theirs only.

Finally, Enerus heard footsteps behind him, and he turned to see Strika walking out of the clump of trees Carnis had been left in and heading directly towards him. Her shoulders were squared and tensed, but her ears were only tilted back instead of held there. Enerus stopped in his tracks and stood at attention, ready to tell her that he and Clarit had seen nothing, but his leader didn't even slow down.

Strika came to an abrupt stop in front of Enerus. Snow sprayed over the ground from the force of her halt. The two glared at each other.

"Is Carnis alright?" Enerus said. He struggled to keep his fists unclenched. The Canid was thankful for the spear in his paw that he could squeeze.

"Yes," Strika said. If it hadn't been for her swift trudging over and the sudden stop, she would've looked as composed as ever. Almost. "He's patched up, but it's only temporary. The injury's not bad enough to stop him. He'll be able to walk, but he'll have to stay back from fights to keep from being picked off." She paused, narrowing her eyes at Enerus, and he felt his fur bristle. "He won't be the only one out of staying out of the formation front."

Enerus stabbed his spear into the ground, and the thud of it hitting the hard dirt vibrated through his whole arm and scraped knuckles. He didn't care. "Strika, none of it was—"

"I don't care if it was unintentional; ya screwed everything over!" Strika exploded, gesturing violently and leaning into Enerus's personal space. He growled, refusing to back away. "You had one job that everyone was depending on ya for, and then you got the medic _shot_—"

"Carnis was the one who hesitated in the middle of a goddamn ice plain, not me!" Enerus said, his patience snapping. "If he'd have kept running instead of freezing, he'd have made it!"

"Carnis might've made a mistake by hesitating, yes, I'll give ya that," Strika growled, shoving her face up in Enerus's, "but he didn't lock up when his company needed him since the very fragging beginning of when he was recruited, and he didn't while he was a Second!"

_Didn't. While he WAS a Second. _The past tense took a moment to register with Enerus, but when it did, his mouth snapped shut and he glared at Strika with enough intensity to melt the snow around them. No, he thought, NO. Anger surged up from his core.

"You wouldn't _dare_," Enerus said in a low voice. But at the same time, he could remember Strika's warning before they took off from the outpost, and something deep down inside of him was twisting and cracking under pressure just like the nose of the fallen Ermehn on the ice plain.

Strika glared right back at him, and for once, Enerus felt himself receiving actual near hatred from his leader. "It's not your choice to make, ENERUS, along with lots of other things now."

"I've had one bad day!" Enerus snarled. "Before now, I've never messed up, and you have no one else you can tru—"

"How can I trust my Second when he can't even trust his own damn body?" Strika spat. Enerus felt all unsaid words die right in his mouth. "Ya can't even use that excuse anymore, Enerus_._"

He'd worked himself raw for this, Enerus thought, staring back at Strika with too much rage and fear choking him to speak; he'd fought all his life to still stay in the Alpha selection, period. He'd guarded Strika's back again and again, and now Strika was just going to strip his position from him?

"I've tolerated you long enough over the years," Strika said, and there was shake in her tone brought on by a snarl and something else Enerus couldn't identify. "For every lock-up and frostbitten blunder you made, I accepted it, and now you're failing to even be a useful soldier instead of a Second."

"Tolerated? _Tolerated me?_" Enerus said. He pushed his face further up into Strika's, almost crushing their noses together, and both of the Canid were breathing harder as he jabbed a knuckle into Strika's chest plate. There was a dull clank, and Enerus's skin split by bark burned. "I've saved your sorry pelt from the Ermehn more than once, I backed you up and straightened up any of your crooked orders and watched the company _JUST AS DAMN MUCH AS YOU DID_; I dealt with your fragging snappy attitude and followed you into whatever ice hell you wanted, and you're going to say you just _tolerated_ me? Without me, you would've been a dead body in the wastes years ago!"

"_Get out of my face_," Strika said. She glared at Enerus with the same kind of near desperate animosity he was staring at her with, but refused to back up. Enerus could see her lips curling up as she bared her fangs, her fur on end like sharp brown icicles, and he felt himself baring his teeth right back. "THAT'S AN ORDER."

"To who?" Enerus said, his heart pounding. If he didn't fight back, he could lose everything at this point. He couldn't back off now, he thought, not even for an enraged Strika, because _nothing _mattered more than hanging on. "Your Second?"

"I regret ever having you as one, even when ya weren't a totally useless cripple," Strika said.

Enerus felt something in him stored with all the blurred memories and hate for the smell of burning break.

"You have no room to talk," Enerus said. He snorted with disgust. "You're no second Clovis yourself—"

Strika slugged Enerus across the face.

A shockwave of pain slammed into his jaw and cheek, and Enerus hacked up air and staggered back a step. The cut across his mouth split open further with a jolt of stinging flesh. Enerus coughed and held a paw over his mouth, tasting blood.

Strika looked unsure of what she'd done, still hesitating in her crouch with a fist drawn back like she didn't know why everything had just happened. Enerus pulled away his paw from his mouth and found it smeared with patches of red. The grey-furred Canid launched himself at Strika with a snarl, and all of her hesitation disappeared when he right-hooked her nose.

Strika took the blow before finding her balance again, getting into a fighting stance, and Enerus barely managed to block one of her blows at his ribs when she came after him. There was a crash of metal on metal as he hit her across the chest plate and shoulder with his spear, but Enerus cursed as Strika got her paws around his fingers and ripped the weapon right out of his hold before slamming her knee into his kidney. Both Canid went down in a screaming, brawling heap of limbs and crashing armor in the snow.

Enerus tore out of the hurricane of blows and was just about to punch Strika in the eye— she preparing to slam a fist into his temple— when they were roughly wrenched apart from their furious, heated fight by two strong grips on their scruffs. A huge mass of dark fur stepped in between them. Enerus snarled in fury, still trying to get at Strika around Clarit and hit her, and he could see Strika's enraged eyes as she attempted to do the same.

_Crack._

Clarit stepped out of the way and slammed Strika and Enerus's heads together. Enerus saw stars as his whole body was paralyzed from the pain arching through his skull. His stitched cut and recently amputated ear screamed. Across from him, Strika had frozen up similarly, trying to find her balance through the dizziness of cracking heads. Clarit stepped between them again, her thick fingers and claws still buried into their scruffs. She wrenched the two Canid closer together and leaned down to put her face right up in theirs.

"ENOUGH," Clarit growled. Her hot breath washed over Enerus's whiskers.

Enerus stepped back and tore out of her grip, backing away from her. Strika twisted Clarit's wrist and got out the same way, her younger sibling releasing her with a small sound of surprise. Both quarreling company members stood on each side of Clarit for a few long moments, trying to get back their bearings and breath. The icy Northern Waste wind never stopped blowing.

The instant Strika got her balance again, a second or two before Enerus did, she marched straight over for the other Canid. Clarit stepped in her way. Strika ignored her, trying to sidestep the living block as Enerus growled and wiped the blood from his mouth, but Clarit moved over into Strika's way once more. The leader's sharp eyes finally snapped up to the soldier standing in front of her.

"Clarit," she said, speaking from between gritted teeth, "_move._"

"No," Clarit said. She met her sister's gaze without problem. Light and cloudy yellow eyes met much brighter and angular ones.

"That was an order, not a request," Strika said, straightening up and using her leader voice. Enerus watched her from behind Clarit, feeling some sinking hatred when he realized that she was going to stay a leader… unlike him.

"I know," Clarit said. "I'm defying it as your sibling, not a soldier."

There was a long, long pause as both Canid scrutinized each other in the blowing snow. Enerus felt his hackles stand on end when Strika took a step back, expecting her to disable Clarit and come charging on to finish their fight, but it didn't happen. Strika took yet another step back to get herself more space, and the brown-furred Canid closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her muzzle. A hissing sound came from between her teeth that sounded as if she wanted to kill both of them. Clarit and Enerus tensed.

"Both of ya, back to the trees where Carnis is," Strika said. She released her face and opened her eyes. Her voice sounded hoarse from all of the snarling. "Doubletime. I have enough tripe already with an injured soldier on the fragging first leg of the patrol trek. Enerus, help him up and get in place to move out. Clarit, I'll deal with you and this little incident later," she growled. "Move, _now._ We need to get Carnis to the garrison for better treatment."

"Varsling's only a day's worth of traveling away," Enerus said. The small, rocky garrison was one of the many located on the Aisling and Northern Waste border, and Strika and her company— _their _company, Enerus thought fiercely— had always stopped there when they were doing long patrols. "If we move out now and beat the storm, we could make it in less."

Strika gave him an odd look, but he didn't miss the scorn in it. "We're not heading to Varsling. We're going back to Deltrada."

Enerus stared in surprise, and somewhere in the back of his mind, he was painfully aware of how frostbitten similar this was to the scene that had taken place after he'd woken up from his… "What? But the mission—"

"Ya fragged over any chance we had at carrying out the mission," Strika said, and the aggression spiked between her and Enerus again. Clarit remained lingering nearby in case of a fight. "I'm not going to travel over hundreds of miles of Ermehn-infested tundra with an out-of-commission medic and a Second who can't stop having seizures every few minutes long enough to do his job. I've risked my team enough. I'm not doing it any more. We're heading back to Deltrada, Enerus, whether ya slagging like it or not. We're done. Now move out!"

Enerus and Strika stayed unmoving for an extra moment, even after Strika had yelled her order and Clarit had left. Their yellow eyes stared each other down a few moments longer, both pairs fiery and unyielding. The Canid's fur stood on end as the leader and second-in-command— who was realizing he was no longer Second— glared at each other.

The moment broke when Enerus looked away first. Strika's chest swelled in grim satisfaction.

Enerus cursed violently, kicking out at the snow, and he followed Clarit's retreating form and marched off for where Carnis was. He could hear Strika's footsteps crunching through the snow behind him, and Enerus absolutely hated how the sound of them made his heart beat faster in its own sick panic. He gritted his teeth and forced the rising ire in his mouth back down.

He was only going to give up being Second when Strika gave his cold, dead body the command that he was demoted, Enerus thought, watching Clarit's broad back up ahead. And he might've been cold, but he wasn't dead.

Enerus straightened out his shoulders with a vicious pride, knowing Strika could see him. That position was _his; _he'd earned it with every forsaken Ermehn he'd put down and each of the hundreds of hard missions he'd help lead this company on. Until Strika gave him a direct order or signal that he was no longer Second, by all the fangfire in hell, he still _was_.

Clarit had made it back to Carnis first, and Enerus walked in through the pine trees and found her crouching next to their medic, bending down so that she could actually see the extent of his wounds. Putting the hulking vanguard to crouch next to the slender medic made their size difference almost comical.

Carnis seemed smaller than usual. He looked shrunken in pain after the operation he'd guided Strika through, and the yellow of his eyes was dull compared to the usual sharp gleam in them. He was listless as he slumped against a tree trunk with his torn robe and armor put back on, but Carnis rose to his feet when he saw Enerus and Strika approaching, refusing to use Clarit to steady himself.

"Are we moving out?"

"Yes," Strika said, slinging his closed medic bag over her shoulder. "Everyone, get your tails up. We're heading back to Deltrada."

Enerus ignored Carnis's look of shock and the way the other Canid's eyes immediately went to him. He hefted his spear over his shoulder and stared out into the ice-coated woods. Carnis silently looked away with no more surprise.

He did, however, approach Strika and politely hold out his paw. Strika raised an eyebrow at him.

"Do ya need something, Carnis?"

"I am hurt, but I am still the medic," Carnis said. He pointedly looked at the healer's bag and gave Strika a pained half smile. Enerus could see his pride shining through. "I believe that belongs to me."

Strika looked at him briefly before giving the bag back without a smile. "Fine."

Carnis received his healer's kit, and the company of Canid prepared to move out. Strika took point as always, leading them back into the forest the way they had come. Enerus strode forward, ready to take Second position and damn the consequences— and then Clarit stepped into his place behind Strika without a moment's hesitation. The leader's back stiffened for a moment… and then she continued on without objection.

Strika's wordless acceptance of Clarit taking Second said much more than any command.

Face burning with humiliation, his tail feeling like it was trying to crawl between his legs in shame and anger, Enerus was forced to follow after Clarit. If Strika had stabbed him through the ribs, then she would've got the message across to him just as easily, Enerus thought. His teeth ground together so hard he thought he was going to crack them, and every bit of snow that he stepped in felt like it was trying to mock him with its cold clinginess. His cut lip burned. Enerus was stuck between wanting to stab Clarit in the back or crawling underneath the nearest snowdrift and staying there until he froze to death.

He had failed; he had failed and lost the role of Second, and on top of that, he'd caused an entire mission failure. _An entire mission, _Enerus thought, and now he was going to be forced to walk back into Deltrada in this position, watching Clarit's back the whole time.

Even worse— when he reached the garrison again, superiors would ask questions. Strika would answer each one of them. And Enerus would lose so much more than just his company rank. Fear lurched in the Canid's stomach at the thought of having all he'd struggled for taken, and all because of no one but his own damn body. The humiliating walk back to Deltrada with the sounds of cheering Ermehn still ringing in Enerus's ear seemed to stretch out for an extra thousand forsaken miles.

It only became worse when Enerus realized that Carnis wasn't next to him. He glanced back to see the other Canid walking behind him, slowing and speeding up intermittently and hesitating as he got close to passing Enerus. Carnis didn't even know what rank he was anymore, Enerus thought. He ripped a stray branch off a nearby limb blocking them far harder than he needed to when the comprehension hit him: Carnis didn't know whether to take Rearguard or Third. _He was trying to put Enerus in stinking Third._

In a small company, Third was the most guarded position. It was for the weakest, the most targeted— like a medic— and the injured. Due to their place right in the middle, the Third was guarded from the front by Point and Second, and protected from the back by the Rearguard. It was NOT for someone who had just held Second, Enerus thought, fury boiling up in him as he stamped over another snowdrift behind Clarit, her windblown cloak almost catching him in the face.

Add in the fact that it was Carnis trying to give him the position as if he was sick and needed protection — injured, weakened, small Carnis who'd just taken two arrows to the shoulder— _and Strika and Clarit were mockingly saying nothing, _and the shame and hate doubled tenfold. Enerus had thought the humiliation couldn't feel any worse. He was wrong.

"Carnis," Eneris barked, slowing down to walk next to the injured medic. Carnis blinked in surprise, glancing up front in discomfort as Strika's ears tilted back to listen in. Enerus felt his scruff prickle at the action. He coldly ignored it, getting up in the smaller Canid's face so he couldn't be denied. "Take Third."

Carnis gave him a hesitant look. "Enerus, are you—"

"That's an order," Enerus growled. Carnis's ears automatically drooped and his tail pulled closer to his body as natural reflexes to hearing his superior's commands. Enerus could read the look hidden in his face: _you didn't say that was an order from your Second, so what are you?_

The marked Canid eyed Enerus's face cautiously before glancing up towards Strika. She was striding on like always and leading the company to cut through the trees and freezing wind, but her back was tense, and her motions were stiffer than before. Carnis looked between them a few more times with only his narrowed eyes moving, and Enerus thought his chest was going to explode with impatience.

Finally, Carnis pulled up the straps on his healing kit, and he sped up to move into Third position behind Clarit. He walked with his ears down, muzzle and tail lowered, and fur prickling slightly. He didn't look at Strika. Enerus took Rearguard with a savage, hurting satisfaction. If he was going to permanently lose control when he returned to Deltrada, he thought, showing his fangs in a hidden snarl at cold, he might as well act as a commanding member of his company one last time.

Strika, moving along up front with her back a rigid line, said nothing. Clarit cast one look at Carnis behind her and made a low sound in the back of her throat that Enerus swore was satisfaction, but the wind could've distorted his hearing. The grey-furred Canid raised his head as high as could in the present situation, challengingly staring at the elements through the burn of complete failure gnawing in his stomach. His fingers curled around his spear and gripped hard enough to turn his knuckles a different shade from pressure when he thought he saw Strika look back him… and say nothing once more.

The walk of humiliation back to Deltrada continued.


	6. Part VI

After the early return to the garrison and the absolute hell that was walking through it, Enerus found himself sitting on his bunk in his quarters. He stared up at the skeletal frame of wooden slates that made up the bottom of the bunk above him. It was empty, Enerus thought, clenching his claws into the thin cot underneath him. A tiny fraction of a chill crept throughout the otherwise abandoned room. Empty bunks lined the stone sides of the room in neat rows, their uniform blankets stretched across the mattresses unwrinkled and untouched. Dormitories were segregated by gender, and no male Canid in Enerus's assigned quarters had come back to the room yet.

No other soldier had been commanded to head up to their sleeping quarters or face more consequences, Enerus thought. As if I'm not facing enough.

The return to and through Deltrada had been a pit of disgrace all on its own. A sentry had spotted Strika's patrol through the dour afternoon light, trudging through the built-up snow and ice flecks after only half a day of traveling instead of four. When Strika had reached the fortress's close proximity instead of just being able to see its high stone walls and the waving Canid flags, there had been a whole swarm of anxious, serious-faced soldiers awaiting them, who apparently believed that an Ermehn revolution or a complete slaughter out on the tundra had cut their patrol voyage short.

Heads of sentries and on-duty soldiers had been peeking above every battlement on the top of Deltrada's solid defense when Strika had been forced to clench her jaw to remain composed and explain everything— especially when their patrol had been allowed past the giant gates and begun walking through the fortress, and absolutely everyone had seen a stony-faced Enerus taking Rearguard and Clarit taking Second. No one had said anything, Enerus thought. But he'd felt every bit of the goddamn _judgment_. A low snarl slipped through his teeth before he could help it. It echoed uselessly in the empty dorm.

No, sir, Enerus thought, his mind warping Strika's voice as it replayed every painful bit of the conversation, we were not driven back by superior numbers. Not for the most part, anyway. No, sir, we found nothing of importance but a letter between Ermehn tribes. It was burned; we don't have it. No, we were unable to read it first.

_No, sir, our medic isn't the only one put out of commission._

Strika had deliberately looked back at Enerus from her walk next to the officer, and then he'd seemed to register that the supposed Second of the team wasn't up front helping Strika fill him out on why they'd had a whole mission failure. Enerus could just feel the fragging assessment and condemnation in the few second look the officer had given him before he'd gone back to drilling Strika with questions. It only got worse when Carnis had been swiftly carted to the infirmary and the company was shrunken down to Enerus, Clarit, and Strika.

The difference between the trudge back through the freezing forest in Rearguard and the walk through the cool stone halls of Deltrada was that in the former, only his teammates had seen his humiliation and displacement. In the latter, it was everyone, Enerus thought. Slagging _everyone._

Throughout the entire merciless walk from the outside of Deltrada and through its protected walls, Enerus had stared straight ahead and avoided absolutely all eye contact whatsoever, even with hundreds of sets of yellow eyes on his back as Strika discussed more with the officer without him in the conversation. They had just kept going and going, leaving the grey-furred Canid in Third, in an unnamed last that was beyond slagging Third, and everyone had smelled the disgrace and demotion of the once-Second. Enerus's curled fists shook from the pressure he was putting into them, his scraped knuckles stinging as they were slowly torn open another fraction by the seams.

Not only had he created a catastrophe, but he'd caused a complete mission failure, and singlehandedly brought an entire patrol trek and the respect of the nearby Ermehn crashing down around his one remaining ear. And why? WHY?Because his fragging body was worthless; because it tore everything apart that it touched like a worthless cripple. Because Enerus, the other Canid had muttered behind his back, because Enerus the screw-up had managed to destroy all order with one of those icebitten lock-up moments. Idiot! Sludge-brain! Couldn't he control his own stinking body? What kind of a Second or soldier was he?

'What kind of _Canid _is he?' a one-eyed soldier had said, his eyebrows rising in disgust over the white patchy markings he had across his brow, despite the black cord of the eye patch stretching across his face. His friends had muttered their quiet gruff assent around him, the words whispering behind Enerus's back, and the grey-furred soldier been physically shaking with rage as he walked away from the Canid behind him with his paws held stiffly down by his sides and tail bristling.

At one point throughout the march, the hint of burning armor had clouded up Enerus's nose. He'd bitten down on his tongue and the side of his cleft lip so hard that he almost split both of them open, his face rigid and insides blistering with so much hate and helplessness towards everything that he'd actually forced himself to trudge through the ashy scent clouding his senses. The pain of his teeth digging into tongue kept him grounded and moving, though he'd felt like he was wading knee-deep through muck the whole time. Never again, he'd told himself. _NEVER. AGAIN._

Enerus had ignored the quiet tilt of ears from Clarit and the glance that lingered far too long on his face, as if he'd paused for a moment.

Shortly afterwards, while Strika was trying to juggle all the questions and orders that came from completely bailing on a mission, she had dismissed Clarit and Enerus. Clarit was ordered off to the infirmary to get her nose checked before heading off to the training grounds. Enerus had been told to do the same… and then go to his sleeping quarters. It was as if he was incapable of helping out without anything at the garrison at this point. Only being inside the dormitory prevented Enerus from spitting bitterly on the ground.

He had almost disobeyed Strika out of the pure spite of feeling his place in the structure of their company come splintering and crumbling down around him. Almost. The urge to get away from the other Canid watching his walk of disgrace and the team's early return had won out over his other feelings.

Enerus had given Strika a stiff nod and obeyed, his mouth scrunched in a flat line. He had turned and marched through the garrison halls, gotten his quick medical check done and attempted to check on Carnis— only to be turned away, since the other Canid was having some adjustments being made to his wound stitches— and then went up to his room. His pure inactivity while all the other Canid were working on something to keep their fortress functioning was about to drive Enerus insane, and it hadn't even been a fragging hour. He dug his fingers into the furrowed cot blankets harder, glaring at the dormitory door as if watching it would make time pass faster. Strika had ordered him to the quarters for 'an hour or two', and given the option, he wasn't giving her a bloody second more than what she'd commanded from him.

The hour trickled by an agonizing pace, and Enerus grew more restless. He began to pace back and forth in front of his cot, his tail swishing behind him. Staying still wasn't something that went well with him— especially since it was what happened when he began to lock up, no matter the situation.

Enerus heard Carnis screaming as arrows caught him in the shoulder, and remembered the pain splitting his head open when the Ermehn had taken his ear and the taste of lightning had flooded his mouth. He'd been still, then. _Helpless. _Like a groveling pup. The grey-furred Canid whirled around and began another round of pacing.

Far, far in the back of Enerus's head, firmly locked away with some scrambled realizations about himself and acidic emotions, he knew that his lock-up moments occurred. They were always lurking in his subconscious, drudging up now and then to touch and ruin whatever he was doing. He… knew that they were there. Very, very occasionally, Enerus even admitted that he might just have something permanently wrong with him, and he didn't even do it subconsciously.

There was a mental wall in his head the thickness of one of Deltrada's siege doors when the subject of the muscle spasms and going unconscious came up.

That thing that had happened in the outpost with the Ermehn had only repeated itself a few times— no, only _one _time— before in Enerus's life.

Back when the grey-furred Canid had been a clunky juvenile still trying to fill out his armor and discovering that he loved fighting for his country above everything else, he had already been facing odds. Despite the fact that the eager young Enerus seemed ready to dive into soldier work years before the mandatory draft at age nineteen, all of the officers and teachers had seemed hesitant to recommend him for the Alpha stream. As far as they had been concerned, he had talent, yes, he worked hard, true, and possessed the tempered brutality needed for combat, but there was something… _off_ tainting his accomplishments. Little hints of intrinsic failure lined all of his hard work.

His mother, who'd found their marked reluctance infuriating, had immediately enrolled her son in the several most brutal survival courses she could find to prove he'd be a worthy Alpha candidate. Enerus had spent all summer trying not to starve to death and facing northern Aisling's wrath.

At one point, he hadn't eaten anything for nearly two days, and a desperate Enerus had been struggling to get through the sparse forest and find the meager rations the instructor had hidden away. He'd been weighed down with scout-level armor— something he would later discover was nothing compared to what the Canid bootcamps wanted out of their soldiers— and starvation, the achingly dry cold, the never-ending stretch of tall pines, hard ground, and expectations to impress his superiors had been weighing down on him. The only way to win was to get out alive at the very end of the course without leaving on his knees, and Enerus had been fiercely intent on staying off them even days before the course ended.

He'd been following the faint trail of his instructor and the strong, bitter scent of something burning for the past several minutes. The Canid had been convinced that the apparent smell of a fire had to yield something, whether it was one of the course's traps or not. All the young Canid currently wandering the Aisling forest were told the instructor did no interfering, Enerus had thought he as knelt to look at a track, but maybe that'd been a lie.

When he'd bent down to touch the faint footprint, his fingers barely brushing the small disturbance on the hard ground, his body had abruptly given one tense shiver and froze him down to his last ligament. Enerus had felt his nose light on fire, his innards scrambled themselves in one hot mess, and he'd desperately tried to claw at the ground in front of him to keep from falling— to get on his knees and balance himself, to be able to do stinking _something. _His arm had given a crippled jerk, and the whole world had gone dark in one giant spasm that shook his muscles and sent him crashing to the hard ground and slammed his jaws together.

Enerus had sluggishly awoken to being stretched out across the forest floor with aching teeth, a bruised muzzle, and slightly darker woods. Distorted circles and blurry patches had swam in front of his eyes before he'd propped himself up on his elbows and knees and rubbed them away. His stomach had been screaming in enough hunger to make everything below his ribs ache, and as the Canid had clumsily struggled to his feet, he'd had no idea why the fragging blazes he'd ended up on the ground— or what had happened before he did.

The cursing adolescent had chalked it up to collapsing from hunger as he dusted himself off and trudged on to find more food and supplies. He did not think about the fact that it was too early to be dropping from hunger, and if he had, then he shouldn't have been able to get up again. He did not think about how the scent of burning had disappeared. Enerus had firmly pushed down and ignored every little sensation or thought that had anything to do with losing control and having a…

The Canid had struggled on without incident and found food later.

In his dormitory, Enerus was finished with waiting. It'd been close enough to an hour already, he thought, immediately striding away from where he'd been wearing a hole in the floor and leaving the barracks. An empty hall greeted him, bare of all necessities but a torch here and there and the Canid flag or emblem adding a splotch of color to the dark stone walls. Enerus could hear his footsteps being followed by lonely echoes that bounced over the stone and whispered in his ear. They continued to drift through the hall, only dimmed by the very distant sounds of other Canid talking elsewhere in Deltrada.

Enerus almost made it down to the training grounds before he was intercepted by his garrison superior Lieutenant Daral. The tawny-colored Canid blocked him with a neat crossing of arms and half step in front of the exit.

"Enerus, come to my station for a moment. We need to discuss your rank."

The words made Enerus's stomach sink like he swallowed a dense chunk of ice. So it was finally happening, he thought. Strika really didn't frag around.

Without response, Enerus followed Daral back to his small office. Agitation sawed over his nerves like a rusty blade along and fought with a dull feeling of unconcern and apathy. He was only going to be demoted in Strika's company, after all, the apathetic voice muttered in Enerus's head as he marched down the hall with the Lieutenant. Enerus moved aside to let Daral step into his office first. He was a good soldier and decent leader; he was safe, the flat mental voice said again. The Canid shut the door behind him.

The part of him that acknowledged his lock-up moments and much worse snarled in desperation.

Like the office of many relatively lower-ranked officers, Daral's room was sparse of anything but two chairs, a desk, and a few curls of parchment and quills within the former's drawers or scattered around the surface. Deltrada was a giant garrison and an even larger example of the Canid hierarchy system— fangfire, they had miniature hierarchies webbing out in the main hierarchy, Enerus thought. Deltrada wasn't even one garrison; it was several, and each one was immense_._

It still didn't stop every Canid who were stationed within it from calling their individual garrison Deltrada. It was part of the pride of serving there: you didn't need to give your fortress's name when you could tell any other Canid alive that you worked at Deltrada. They'd understand immediately. Enerus never grew tired of it and the fierce pride and bearing that filled him whenever he told a southern Canid that '_yes, I serve at Deltrada.'_

He never grew tired of the respect they gave him, either.

The three generals Clovis, Tyril, and Galleon might've watched over Deltrada as a whole and trained the elites for higher parts of the army, but they were hardly equipped to run the whole interlocking system of the fortress all by themselves. Each general had their own officers, captains, sergeants, and selection of soldiers underneath them to aid in running the fortress string smoothly. Everyone in this fortress was positioned beneath Galleon.

Strika had been sore at not getting a place under Clovis for a long time, Enerus thought. His felt his fingers automatically tightening into fists at the thought of his company member's name.

From across the desk, Daral observed his shift in positioning. He himself didn't move. Enerus swore that the Lieutenant looked ready to lock his fingers together and contemplatively lean his muzzle against them. Daral had the damnedest habit of making his patrol soldiers feel like his eyes were eating them from the inside out.

"Enerus," he said. Enerus instinctively wriggled to sit up straighter as he felt the other Canid's eyes trace over his cut lip and amputated ear. "Second-in-command of Patrol Company number fifteen. Serves directly beneath Strika Strikfang. Four years of Detrada service and counting."

There was a pause. Enerus remained at attention in his seat. Only practice kept his scruff from bristling when Daral's eyes took their sweep over his throat. His superior let him stew in silence for a moment. The disfigured side of Daral's mouth twitched, breaking from its perpetual frown.

"Yes, sir," Enerus said. He went back into silence.

Most of the older Canid had marks from Ermehn assaults, Enerus thought, ignoring the long thin scars that cut directly down the side of Daral's mouth and ran in sharp scrapes along his throat. But this was different.

The left corner of Lieutenant Daral's mouth was curled down in a permanent frown, and the deep scars were bare, leaving them as dark slivers of skin against his tawny fur. From past sparring experience, Enerus knew there was a whole collection of them lower down, leaving slices of curved scar tissue all along his chest.

No one knew who or what the fangfire had gotten a hold of Daral. They didn't ask. He didn't tell them.

"Enerus, you and your patrol arrived back here at Deltrada three days earlier than you were planned to. Patrol Lead Strika informed me that none of you made it past the Varsling line before turning around. You also lost a potentially important Ermehn message and indirectly led to your medic being incapacitated." Daral pressed his paws together on the desk as he gauged Enerus's reaction. "Do you verify these facts?"

"Yes, sir," Enerus said. He wasn't as rigid in his seat as before, but he couldn't bring himself anywhere close to relaxing. He was more poised like a stiff lieutenant than bloody Daral was, for hell's sake, Enerus thought. His whole body felt as mobile as a sack of ice shards. "It wasn't entirely my fault that our medic was comprised. He hesitated when he shouldn't have and got shot for it. But it was my actions that led to the situation."

"And you will be held responsible for most of the results," Daral said calmly. He dipped down the edge of his muzzle. Enerus felt the lieutenant's gaze resting on his face again, and he was reminded of Strika trying to dig out the arrow from Carnis's chest. The grey-furred Canid clenched his teeth slightly and stared back as directly as possible without inviting aggression.

"You were on probation prior to this incident."

And he was a goddamn Ermehn if he hadn't hated every minute of it, Enerus thought. He struggled to keep his composure, because suddenly he was being reminded of Strika's near betrayed look of hate and her comment about him being a cripple, and it was hard to keep from snarling or pinning his one ear back.

But being on short term probation before getting out of it and then back into good graces— only to flop back in three or four months later— was the story of his life, Enerus thought.

"I know. Sir."

He worked hard. Frag, he really did. He _beyond _worked hard. Serving his country and fighting on the current frontlines were his life, and Enerus had just about viciously driven himself into the ground to keep his patrol route cleared and all his other fortress duties straight. He'd been wearing his paws raw and heading on to training with bloody fingers since the very stinking moment he learned he had a shot for getting into the Alpha selection, and there wasn't a single day where the workload had let up.

Strika and Clarit had walked in to the Alpha stream. He had beaten and clawed his damn way into it and the higher military, and he'd sunken his jaws in and refused to get pitched out, Enerus thought. And yet all his hard work was just compensation.

Deltrada and the Northern Wastes demanded the best from the Canid living and fighting in them. 'The best' did not apparently include Canid who had a tendency to freeze up occasionally and miss parts of their sentry shifts— parts that could've had Ermehn sneaking by. Nor did it count soldiers who carried handicaps that made them hesitate in training— training that could've been actual combat if the situation was different.

Like what had happened with his ear and Carnis.

'The best' didn't consider patrol Seconds who could send an entire mission crashing to the ground with two screw-ups.

"Before you were on light probation last month, you were clear the three before it, and then on it again," Daral said. He looked at Enerus as if to say _connect the lines._ "All together, you've been on and off probation no less than five times for spans of months since you get here to Deltrada. But when you're not— fragshards, even when you are— the effort put into your performance remains the same… even if your record does not."

Enerus didn't want to think about the amount of marks on his record. The twisted fairness yet unfairness of it pissed him off.

"How badly do you want to stay in Deltrada?" Daral said. He looked ready to ask him to sell one of his slagging limbs, Enerus thought. A tiny shiver flicked across his spine.

"I'd pay all costs," Enerus said, unable to keep from baring part of his fangs. "The Ermehn will kill me before they get me out of the north. Sir."

The lines of scars down Daral's neck trembled softly like the ropes of a set snare.

"You have proficient experience, and you can fight," Daral said. He gave Enerus a faint rough smile to punctuate the unsaid joke— _we're a bunch of Canid in Deltrada, we can all fight._ The scarred corner of his mouth remained frozen and unmoving. "Your Patrol Lead Strika said you were a solid Second, kept your wits about you most of the time, and that she wouldn't have anyone else watching her back in the wastes."

Enerus couldn't disguise the surprise that crossed his face. Daral noticed. Enerus had to force himself back into composure again. After everything, he thought, Strika still had that to say. She was still a professional above all. Of course she wouldn't lie about all the fragging years they'd served together for something petty and one sour mission, Enerus reasoned. Something in him near his ribs started to wrench painfully.

"However," Daral continued, "she also said your condition and various seizures made you incapable of being entirely reliable at all times. The incidents within the mission prove this, along with most of the events that earned you your probations. You are not fit to be a Second."

Enerus had known that was coming. It still didn't prevent the urge to rise out of his chair and just fling the goddamn thing against the wall until it disappeared in a pile of shattered wooden splinters. Enerus just clenched his fingers harder around the chair seat, swallowed the snarl and protest he'd had rising in his mouth, and remained down. It hurt, but it was logical, and it was… fair. Daral watched everything without a break in his composure. Enerus wrenched open his jaws to say 'yes, sir,' and leave, but the other Canid beat him to speaking.

"Neither are you fit to be an active patrol member."

_NO._ Enerus made a strangled noise that was inaudible, but if he was going to be honest, he'd hatefully seen that order coming too along with the demotion—

"With all of the recent Ermehn activity and various hesitations you've had in training and combat, you don't fit the criteria for being a scout or sentry. Your reflexes aren't fast enough, you lack the necessary speed for the scout position, and you've had far too many failings in the latter field." Daral twined his fingers together in front of him and watched Enerus as the Canid felt his whole world start to come apart underneath him. "Did you take any teaching, construction, or metal smith training beside your Alpha stream soldiering?"

Enerus's mouth was entirely dry. The new scar along his lip and all of the bruises on his body from the mission hissed and ached and burned him.

"No, sir," he said. Everything tasted like the smell of bitter armor on fire again. "I stuck to the combat training and survival courses."

Everything he'd done, he'd done it to be part of the higher military, Enerus thought, staring at Daral as the lieutenant appeared to weigh his choices out. It'd forced him to take more than one training course in fighting, scouting, basic medics, and a whole hell of a lot of other things, but outside of being an active soldier, he had nothing. Literally slagging nothing. And now, since he could no longer fight…

A realization hit Enerus, and the Canid stiffened. He looked sharply at Daral. The lieutenant had mentioned metal smithing— as in, the highest class Omega occupation allowed in the fortress. Something he didn't have the skills for… no matter how inferior it was considered.

Fangfire, NO, Enerus thought, watching the decisive expression come over Daral's face. The grey-furred Canid started to rise from his chair. He'd let himself be demoted, he'd let himself lose the damn job he'd been fiercely holding for years, but he wouldn't let THIS happen. After everything he'd done, he wasn't— _couldn't_— be inferior; not to anyone here or anywhere else in this fragging frozen country or the one above it!

"I can still fight; all you need to do is place me in the back instead of the front!" Enerus growled, feeling the world slip out of his paws. He desperately leaned over the desk, fingers digging into the edge so hard the wood felt ready to crack. "This doesn't need to happen. I'm still bloody useful! Lieutenant, if you'd just—"

"Enerus, sit down_,_" Daral said. His dull golden ears were starting to push back, and there was less pleasantness in his darker eyes.

Enerus felt his fur stand on end in the same way it'd been when he'd defied Strika, but this time, the fear and anger were at an all-time high as they gnawed through his senses and drove his adrenaline up. He stared challengingly back at Daral, already feeling the strain in the room cranking up.

"I'm capable above Omega level, sir," he barked, "I have far more experience and strength then any of those damn—"

"_Down,_" Daral growled. The lieutenant's ears pinned back against his head, his eyes terrifyingly wide in aggression, and his whole set of red gums and sharp teeth were bared underneath a set of prickling whiskers. The scarred side of his mouth warped into a hideous grimace of scar tissue.

Enerus's tail retreated between his legs against his will, his fur standing on end with something more than anger. Damn it, he thought, feeling his fingers shake against the desk they were clamped around as Daral mercilessly stared him down. For a fleeting moment, he was tempted to flip the desk over and slam it into his superior's face— just to have a better reason for the destruction of all his accomplishments and mass demotion than _this, _than something he was completely helpless against— but in the next instant, one look at the expression in Daral's eyes drove that idea to a screeching halt.

There was a pause. Enerus took a shaky breath that cleared the snarl from his throat and looked away from his superior's gaze, his remaining ear drooping in submission. The Canid shoved away from the desk and roughly dropped into his chair again. Daral immediately ceased growling and become calm and placid again, his scarred mouth resuming its usual flat line and tilted half-frown. He hadn't even gotten up from behind the desk.

"You are in shape, and you do have more experience than the Omega when it comes to fighting," Daral said. He spoke calmly, as if the confrontation only moments ago had never happened. "But your condition could cause even more serious consequences than just a shot patrol medic or failed mission if I put you into combat or sentry. It's my duty to prevent that from happening, for Deltrada's and everyone else's sakes."

Daral adjusted his arms, sitting up straighter with his elbows on his desk.

"As of tomorrow, after the storm coming tonight has passed, you'll turn in your Second badge and heavy armor and go join the rest of the Omega outside the garrison."

Enerus felt his whole world splinter and shatter to pieces around him. Daral went on speaking with his tone still completely matter-of-fact. It ground through Enerus's ears like an Ermehn was stabbing him in the head again over and over.

"You are dismissed. Is that understood?"

"Yes, sir," Enerus managed to force out, and he stiffly saluted his Lieutenant before standing from his chair and leaving the room, heading down the halls of a fortress that wasn't even going to be his home any longer.

In the end, after the fierce storm that threw flecks of cutting sleet and howled around the garrison's corners had finished making its rounds a few days later, Enerus ended up eating his words about paying all costs to stay at Deltrada.

When he'd said that, he'd meant _his _Deltrada— the multiple bunks in the packed dormitory room, getting up at the crack of dawn with the sounds of other stretching and cursing male Canid climbing out of their beds and jerking their uniforms and armor on, and heading downstairs to meet with Carnis, Strika, and Clarit and fellow soldiers to discuss the newest patrol mission.

He hadn't meant the Omega's Deltrada— going to sleep in a sharkskin bedroll on the ground with rows of other outcast Omerga and sheltered by nothing more than a large tent, an existence of one menial labor job after another, always walking underneath the shadow of the fortress walls they'd never be allowed to stay in… because they were _inferior._

Enerus had no longer walked alongside Clarit or Strika or slept in the same dormitory as Carnis; he walked below them and slept under them. He was no longer their leader or consultant— hellfire, he wasn't even their _equal_. He could receive no honorary discharge from the garrison since he was hindered by something embedded in his blood instead of an outwardly inflicted injury. Enerus was a purebred soldier who'd been treated as an Alpha all his life, but now an inferior to everyone he'd ever respected and called a comrade, and feeling more out of place with the Omega than a stinking Felis on a Polcan ship.

Enerus had lasted four days of the shame before he had snapped and couldn't take it any longer.

The grey-furred Canid had packed his two sets of cloths, a dagger, and some rations— all that he really owned for himself; his armor and uniform was the garrison's— and left Deltrada. His farewells with his once-company had been brief. A still-injured Carnis had solemnly told him to take care of himself, both of them parting with a handshake. Clarit had given him a rough vanguard head-butt and salute and told him they'd meet again, whether through fate or her hunting him down.

After they'd gotten over the uncomfortable atmosphere and the urge to initially fight each other, Strika had told him not to die… and that he wasn't the worst Second she'd ever had. They left the half-apology there.

Enerus had headed south, and eventually, west.

Now here he was, a year later, still trying to wade through the accursed thick forests and vines of Sunsgrove, Enerus thought. He was about to raise head and finish off his ale when he realized that a Lutren a few tables away was squirming uncomfortably, and the faint smell of something that wasn't a Tamian dish burning faded from the Canid's nose. Enerus made a small sound of disgust and went back to burying his muzzle in his tankard. If the Lutren was that scared of a blank stare that lasted a few seconds, they'd crawl right out of their sleek pelt if Enerus tried to be actually intimidating.

By this point, Enerus was too fragging tired of his condition to fly into constant rages about it like he'd done before. It was there, and he couldn't ignore it. Fangfire knew where that had got him in Deltrada. Trying to pretend it didn't exist while he had traveled hadn't been any better. For the first few months on the road, he'd singlehandedly managed to uphold the reputation of Canid being rough, angry, and blunt creatures, and traumatized or unnerved no less than ten different villagers and tavern keepers in three months. Fury had been his companion first and foremost.

Eventually, the anger had given way to nothingness just like the scent of burning armor always did, and Enerus was left with a mouthful of lonely-tasting ashes and some bitterness. He was no inferior Omega— but victory wasn't always sweet.

The bar had quieted down to a low roar in the later part of the day, filled with more subdued drinkers and late diners who weren't nearly as energetic as the adolescents and travelers that had been mucking it up before. Enerus wasn't sure of how much time he'd wasted in the Land's End Tavern again or why he kept aimlessly coming back to it every few days to drink and sit alone. Fangfire, he didn't even know what he was doing, period.

Twelve months out of the Aisling cold and structured society of the military garrison, and not one new idea or purpose to keep him from drifting aimlessly. At least he'd stayed in this Sunsgrove town for more than three weeks and found a way to earn a few coppers here and there. That counted for something, Enerus thought.

'_A whole year to think about what to do, and ya don't even have one fragging idea? What are you? A soldier or a concussed pup? Up on your feet, Enerus!'_

'_You are taking a while to decide things. But it is better to find the correct choice of action instead of trying many that all lead to nothing. …I am still not saying you should slow your pace any further, however.'_

'_You should've thought of something by now. But you'll find it soon.'_

The Canid gave a small twisted smile as he mentally heard the voices of comrades he hadn't actually spoken to in a year. The Tamian around here were getting restless over their powerful northern allies, but Enerus assumed that the Ermehn problem that had been raising its head a while back had been taken care of. Frostbite, even if another one was turning up, he had no doubt Strika, Carnis, Clarit, and the garrisons could handle it. They were part of Deltrada after all. Enerus hoped that Strika was damn well running her new Second into the ground with the workload and her aggressive snaps. They'd need to be kept on their toes in the Northern Wastes.

Well, here was to the remnants of the old patrol company keeping the iceslickers up in the wastes and dealing with trouble, Enerus thought. He tipped his tankard and snout up and drank the last gulp of ale. It was far too fruity— as always— but it was still ale, and for a salute, something at least a little alcoholic was required. If he'd have gotten the slagging fruit juice, Strika would've probably perked up a thousand miles away and got the sudden compulsion to strangle him.

In an isolated corner of a tavern, a lone Canid drained the last bit of ale from his tankard. If anyone had actually been paying attention to him, they would see that his gesture was almost like a toast. Almost. But he had no companions, and he was consistently sulky and intimidating at once, so what would he have to be toasting?

Farther out in the forests of Sunsgrove, a Tamian and two Lutren— one young and one old— headed north to the very place the Canid had left behind, preparing to change the kingdom's fate.


End file.
